


(if only in my dreams)

by jehans



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Artist Steve Rogers, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bucky is a porn model is what I'm saying, Carol Danvers is a Good Bro, Christmas, Coming Out, Coming Untouched, Drinking, Exes to Lovers, Face-Fucking, First Time, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Gay Bucky Barnes, Getting Together, Hanukkah, Human Disaster Bucky Barnes, Identity Porn, Idiots in Love, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Manhandling, Minor Becca Barnes/Kate Bishop (implied), Model Bucky Barnes, Mutual Pining, New Year's Eve, Non-Graphic Descriptions of Past Sex Between Teenage Characters, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Pining, Porn Star Bucky Barnes, Recreational Drug Use, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Shotgunning, Size Difference, Size Kink, Smoking, Social Media, Top Steve Rogers, cat dad bucky barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:47:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28357212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehans/pseuds/jehans
Summary: Bucky’s eyes fall on a DM from a Twitter user that hasn’teverinteracted with his highly secret ‘model account’ — where, under the pseudonym ‘Winter,’ he teases and sells artistic photos of himself from the mouth down, in very naked and compromising positions — but one that he knows instantly. One that he knowswell.User @art_mad91. The dorkiest username in the world. A personal twitter account, with no real name attached to it, belonging to one Steven Grant Rogers.Steve, Bucky’s best friend in the entire world, and the secret love of his life since they lost their virginities to each other when he was seventeen, just DMed Bucky on his porn account.Shit.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov/Sam Wilson
Comments: 139
Kudos: 726
Collections: SW101 Members' Holiday Fics, stucky





	(if only in my dreams)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fingerprintbruises](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fingerprintbruises/gifts).



> "My impression of this fic is that a third of the time he's horny for Steve, a third of the time he's crying, and the last third is that he's horny for Steve and crying at the same time." -Bones, extremely accurately assessing this fic based only on the small snips I gave her here and there.
> 
> MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO MY WONDERFUL FRIEND, BONES (aka [fingerprintbruises](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fingerprintbruises))!!! 🎄❤️ I love you very much, and I hope you enjoy your gift, which is...15x longer than I meant it to be! 😅
> 
> Bones gave me a list of over 60 elements, between tropes, kinks, and prompts, that she would enjoy in a fic. I managed to include (or, at the very least, mention) half or more of them. Please enjoy this romp of Holiday Feels! I legitimately had an absolute blast writing it over the last 3 weeks.

“ _Buckyyy_ ,” Steve whines pitifully, and Bucky snorts.

“Steven,” he replies evenly, cradling his phone between his shoulder and his ear so he can lift his child, who is a cat, off of his computer’s keyboard, and set her back on the floor. He loves this fur-ball more than life itself, but she’s _getting i_ _n the way_.

Steve makes a little whimpering noise over the phone, a blatant attempt to manipulate Bucky’s feelings — that, infuriatingly, works _way_ too well on Bucky — and whines his name again.

“I haven’t seen you in forever, pal!”

Bucky sighs. “I know,” he agrees. He _really_ does. “It’s been too long, but I don’t think I can get down there, Steve.”

“It’s a whole week away,” Steve cajoles. “Plenty of time to figure out the details, huh? You can stay here. It’s still your place, too, Buck.”

“It’s yours and Sam’s place now,” Bucky corrects, poking around at the photos he’s editing, and he’s honestly ashamed of the bitterness that leaks through in his voice. But it’s true. Bucky’s name may still be on the lease, but it hasn’t been his place since his dad had a heart attack the same month Bucky lost his job, making it necessary for him to move back home to Connecticut. Sam has been subletting his room ever since, which is actually doing Bucky a huge favor. Doesn’t mean he likes to think about someone else living in a space that used to be Bucky’s. A space that Bucky never wanted to leave in the first place.

Steve makes an irritated sound over the phone, and Bucky can’t see him, but he knows for a fact that the punk is rolling his eyes. They argue about this frequently. Steve still maintains that the apartment is half Bucky’s, and that Bucky’s situation is temporary, and he’ll be back before they have to renew the lease.

That reality is looking more and more unlikely as the months drag on. But Steve _refuses_ to accept this, and it drives Bucky up the fucking wall. It’s fucking _hard_ being forced to keep arguing with Steve’s optimism, to have to constantly vocalize that no, Bucky _doesn’t_ get to go back to his life and his home yet, he’s still stuck in Connecticut as this awful fucking year draws to a close.

“Please, Buck,” Steve asks seriously. “This is our holiday party this year, it wouldn’t be right if you weren’t there.”

“It’s not a party, Steve,” Bucky complains, “you’re bar hopping.”

“We’re going dancing,” Steve corrects him. “Because none of us have time to host something. Come on, pal, Natasha’s coming in from _Moscow_ , you’re way closer than Moscow!”

Bucky laughs despite himself, as he adjusts the white balance on one of his pictures. “Natasha’s coming home for the _holidays_ ,” Bucky points out. “She’s not flying in from Russia just to go clubbing with you.”

“You can sleep on the couch!” Steve offers, ignoring this completely. “Hell, _I’ll_ take the couch, you can sleep in my room!”

“He can sleep in his own damn room!” Bucky hears Sam’s voice yell from somewhere near Steve. “I’ll take your room, Steve, since you’re sleeping on the couch.”

Steve makes a dismissive noise at Sam, who cackles in the background.

“Steve,” Bucky whines, “it’s not really about where I’d sleep. I’m not sure if I can get away. That’s the last day of Hanukkah, and I’d have to leave _before_ sunset, and then Christmas is only like a week later, and my dad still can’t really do errands, so my mom needs my help—”

“Bucky,” Steve interrupts gently, “I’m not trying to make things harder for you, or make it sound like I don’t think what you’re doing is important. It is. If you can’t come, I get it. I really do. I just miss you like hell, buddy. I want to see you.”

Bucky scrunches up his face, safe here where Steve can’t see him. _Fuck_ , that’s not fair. Steve doesn’t even know that that is _exactly_ what Bucky needed to hear to actually make an effort to drive into New York City a week before Christmas, to go clubbing, of all things.

Because here’s the thing: Bucky Barnes is wildly in love with Steve Rogers. Bucky’s been in love with his best friend for something like fifteen years, and Steve has no idea.

Well. Bucky did tell him. Once. But that was twelve years ago. Steve is under the impression those feelings faded long ago.

They did not.

“I miss you, too, pal,” Bucky admits reluctantly, because _Jesus Christ_ , he does.

“Just try?” Steve asks softly. “I swear, if you can’t, I will completely and totally understand, and I will defend your honor to anyone who questions you. But I really fucking wanna see you. Just try?”

“I’m gonna see you for Christmas, though, right?” Bucky asks, frowning. Steve always comes home for Christmas. Bucky did, too, when he was living in New York. It’s been the one thing that’s kept Bucky going for the last month, knowing that Steve is gonna be here. For a few days, at the very least.

“I hope so,” Steve sighs. Bucky’s heart sinks. “I might be kind of slammed with work. I’m still trying. We’ll see.”

“Oh,” Bucky says. His voice sounds so small, even to his ears. “Okay.”

“I’m really trying, Buck, I promise,” Steve tells him earnestly. “But just in case, will you try to come down here for the party, so I can at _least_ see you then?”

Bucky takes a deep breath, closing his eyes. “Okay, Stevie,” he relents, “I will _try_.”

Steve cheers, and Bucky laughs.

“Thank you, Buck, _thank you_ ,” Steve gushes. “This means so much to me, you have no idea. I gotta go now, but I’ll talk to you later, yeah?”

“Yeah, of course,” Bucky replies. He can’t help the way his mouth tugs into a fond smile at the thought that Steve is _so_ excited to see him. “Talk to you later, pal.”

“Okay,” Steve says, wide smile evident in his voice. “Love you!”

“Love you, too,” Bucky answers, and then Steve ends the call.

They’ve known each other since they were infants, they’ve been saying they love each other out loud since they could talk. Just because they’re adults now, the habit didn’t break. What it _does_ break, is Bucky’s heart. A little bit. Every time Steve says he loves him, and only means it as a friend.

Bucky tilts his head back, squeezes his eyes shut, and groans. He _needs_ to get his fucking shit together. This is pathetic. He’s thirty years old, he lives with his parents in his small hometown, and he’s been in love with his best friend since they lost their virginities to each other when he was seventeen.

Fuck all of this.

If Bucky’s gonna go clubbing next week, he’s gonna need money for booze. Which means he needs to upload this set _today_.

Which means he needs to finish editing these goddamn photos.

❄︎

How, exactly, Bucky got here, doing what he’s doing today, is an extremely long, and indescribably complicated story, but the highlights are as follows:

When Bucky was only around seven months old, one of his parents’ best friends, Joe Rogers, was killed in a boating accident, making a widow of Bucky’s parents’ other best friend, the woman Bucky grew up calling Aunt Sarah. Almost exactly four weeks later, Sarah found out she was pregnant.

Bucky’s parents, George and Winnifred, immediately offered Sarah a room in their home. They were all in their mid-to-late twenties, but it was the early ‘90s, and George and Winnifred already had a house. Bucky is bitter about that now that he’s thirty, and _lives with his parents again_ , but whatever. That’s not part of the story.

So anyway, Sarah moved in with George and Winnie, all of them figuring that it would be easier for three adults to raise two young babies than for Sarah to be on her own. Especially since Winnie was already swamped raising Bucky, because George worked nights at that point, and slept during the day. And so, eight months later, Bucky met Steve.

Sarah and Steve moved into their own place when Steve was only three, and Bucky was starting kindergarten, but the Barneses and Rogerses remained close. Bucky grew up with Steve perpetually in his corner, always at his side. Steve was small as a kid, and got picked on for being poor and for not having a dad, but anyone who messed with Steve got quietly and efficiently taken care of by Bucky.

When Bucky was around fifteen, he started noticing other boys. He’d already learned how to flirt with girls, but that summer, some bolt of lightning hit him, and he realized that he _could_ experience all of those fluttery, tight-pantsed feelings the other guys talked about having over girls. Those feelings that Bucky had never really understood. Turned out there was a reason for that: Bucky got them over _boys_ instead. But he was fucking terrified of that fact, said nothing of it to anyone, and just kept trying to feel those feelings with girls. Even though it never worked. Not once.

The next summer, he’d blurted it out to Steve.

They were on the shore, sitting on the rocks near the lighthouse in Bridgeport, where Bucky’d driven them with his brand new driver’s license so they could have some time alone, away from their parents and Bucky’s ten-year-old little sister, Becca. They’d been silent for a while, when Bucky just couldn’t fucking take it anymore, and let out in a rush, “ _IthinkIlikeguys._ ”

Steve turned to look at him, eyebrows raised slightly in surprise.

“Really?” he asked.

Bucky nodded, biting his lip in terror.

But Steve just smiled, and nodded back. “Okay,” he’d said. “Thanks for telling me, Buck. I love you.”

And that was that.

Steve was the only person who knew for years. The first person Bucky ever came out to.

And somehow, they became each other’s firsts in almost everything else.

Bucky had kissed a handful of girls through high school, trying to find one he felt like going further with to no avail, but by the time Steve was about to turn sixteen, he had still never been kissed. He was lamenting about it one afternoon after school, shortly before summer break, sitting on the wall outside the art room with Bucky. He mourned over the fact that no one was ever gonna want to kiss him. That he was too short, too scrawny, too sickly, and too _combative_ for anyone to ever want him at all.

Bucky told him plainly that that was fucking stupid. That _anyone_ would want to kiss Steve, that anyone would be _lucky_ to kiss Steve, and that Bucky himself would kiss Steve just to prove his fucking point.

Steve simply stared at him for a while with wide, surprised eyes, and then laughed like Bucky was joking. Bucky didn’t laugh. It wasn’t a joke. But they dropped it there.

Until later that night, when Steve knocked on Bucky’s second-story bedroom window.

Bucky let him in, scolding him for climbing that goddamn tree when he could have fallen and broken something. Like his fucking _head_.

But Steve interrupted his scolding with a breathless, “I want you to.”

Bucky frowned at him. “You want me to what?” he asked, lost.

“Kiss me,” Steve said. And Bucky’s heart flipped upside down.

Oh.

_Oh._

Fuck—

Steve didn’t give Bucky much time to have his epiphany, though. He walked right up to him, put his hands on either side of Bucky’s face, and pulled him down the scant inch or so remaining between them, until their lips met.

And _oh_ , had that felt like a revelation to Bucky. There, in his bedroom, kissing his very best friend in the entire world, Bucky saw God.

Not one to do anything by halves in his whole life, Steve’s first kiss somehow became both of their first handjobs, jerking each other frantically inside their underwear until both of them came in their pants. And then they kissed some more, and Steve slept in Bucky’s bed, pressed up against his back.

❄︎ ❄︎

It was a one-time thing. Until it wasn’t.

❄︎ ❄︎

A few months after that first time, Bucky was staying over at Steve’s. Sarah was on an overnight shift at the hospital, so they were alone.

Steve was midway through his growth spurt, and Bucky couldn’t stop staring at the width of his shoulders, face hot and crotch tingling. Steve had caught him staring, and was teasing him about it. Bucky was deflecting wildly, until something Steve said made him catch his breath with his arousal, and suddenly, Steve’s eyes darkened.

Suddenly, Steve realized that Bucky was serious.

Suddenly, Steve got on his knees.

❄︎ ❄︎

Three weeks after they traded first blowjobs (and a number of repeated blowjobs later), Steve fucked Bucky in that back of his mom’s car, parked behind one of the town’s churches.

It was both of their first times having penetrative sex. It was awkward, and they both fumbled through opening Bucky up, but _god_ was it tender. Steve was so careful, and checked in with Bucky something like a million times, making sure he was comfortable, that he wanted this, that he felt good. Bucky couldn’t stop kissing any part of Steve he could reach, couldn’t stop moaning into Steve’s skin with how _right_ it felt to be filled by him.

Couldn’t stop himself from whispering, when it was over, and Steve was nuzzling his cheek, “ _I’m so glad it was you._ ”

❄︎ ❄︎

That was the thing that unlocked it for Bucky. He was seventeen and horny, and he and Steve went at it with each other whenever they found some time alone in private. He tried so hard to convince himself that horniness was all it ever was, but even back then, Bucky knew that wasn’t true.

And they weren’t— It’s not like they were _dating_. Except for the fact that they lived inside each other’s pockets — inside each other’s _hearts_ , maybe — and they had sex as often as they could get away with. They weren’t…dating. Technically.

But still. Bucky was helpless not to fall. _Hard_.

Steve graduated with Bucky’s class, a year before he was supposed to, because that dumbass is a fucking genius. A genius who managed to get a full-ride scholarship to study Studio Art at fucking NYU. Meanwhile, Bucky was going to Yale for English (and, ultimately, hopefully, law school — until his third year at Yale when he realized he absolutely _did not_ want to go to law school). New Haven and New York City aren’t really that far apart, but both of them were so overwhelmed and busy their first semesters, that their relationship was whittled down to one phone call a week, if they were lucky. Bucky’s heart _burned_ with missing Steve, and that’s when he finally accepted the truth:

Bucky was in love with his best friend. He had been since they first started having sex.

Probably before that, actually.

Probably _long_ before that.

As soon as Bucky knew it for sure, he _needed_ to tell Steve. He’d never in his life been able to keep anything important from Steve for long, and this— This Steve _really_ needed to know. Maybe, if Steve felt the same way, they could figure it out. Maybe Bucky could be really fucking happy.

He was young, and he was naive.

That weekend, Bucky drove into New York, found the brownstone that belongs to Steve’s fraternity, where he was living, and asked for him there. Steve came to the door looking happy and surprised to see Bucky, but also deeply confused about why he was there.

He probably should have done something romantic. Taken Steve out for dinner, maybe, or the park, or _something_.

What he actually did was take one look at Steve, who was, startlingly, now taller than Bucky for the first time in their lives, and blurted out, “Stevie, I’m in love with you.”

Okay, so it was inelegant. Steve was entirely reasonable to be surprised. The way his eyebrows shot up, his eyes widened, his mouth popped open, all of that made sense.

What Bucky didn’t expect was for Steve’s face to turn white. For the look in his eyes to be clearly distraught, not just surprised.

“Bu-Bucky—” Steve stammered when he managed to find his voice.

“Oh god,” Bucky gasped, heart shattering in his ears. “Fuck—I’m sorry, I’ll—”

“Bucky, wait—”

“No, no, I get it, Stevie,” Bucky said quickly, backing up down the steps, stumbling just to get away. “Say no more, I’ll just go find a hole and bury myself alive, it’s fine.”

“Buck!” Steve cried, catching Bucky’s wrist as he tripped backwards down the last two steps, saving him from braining himself on the sidewalk.

Although maybe it would have been kinder to let him go quick, because the next words out of Steve’s mouth killed him anyway.

“I have a girlfriend, Buck.”

It was like a shard of ice stabbed through Bucky’s heart. Steve had a girlfriend. For the first time ever. A girlfriend that he hadn’t even bothered to tell Bucky about.

“Oh.”

“You’re still my best friend,” Steve was saying, though he sounded far away in Bucky’s ears. “Nothing needs to change, Bucky, please.”

“Sure,” Bucky heard himself say, head bobbing in a nod, possibly completely dissociating at this point. “What’s her name?”

Steve’s eyebrows furrowed in concern. “Peggy,” he answered reluctantly.

“Cool!” Bucky told him, all false alacrity, his voice too high, his throat closing as his eyes burned. “Okay, well, I gotta go!”

Bucky pulled his wrist out of Steve’s grasp, trying not to look at the devastation breaking Steve’s perfect face. Not even close to the devastation wracking through Bucky’s body, and yet still too much to bear.

Steve tried to call after him again, but Bucky barely heard him. Didn’t even manage to find where he’d parked before tears were streaming down his face.

Bucky went back to Yale, and drowned himself in his schoolwork. He ignored Steve’s next phone call. Steve didn’t try to call again.

They didn’t speak again for three years.

❄︎ ❄︎

Thankfully, in their senior year, Bucky managed to get over himself enough to get back in touch. He and Steve attended each other’s graduation ceremonies, and both of them cried when the other walked across the stage.

Steve proposed to Peggy the day after theirs, and when he asked, Bucky readily agreed to be his best man. He told Steve, and himself, that he was over him. Even managed to convince them both for a while. They found an apartment in Brooklyn, and moved in as roommates, and Bucky kept telling himself it didn’t hurt.

But then, a year later, Peggy was offered an amazing job opportunity in England, and when Steve offered to go with her, she said no. Told him that she still loved him, but that she’d realized that if they got married, they’d only hold each other back. That they wanted different things in life, and that their love for each other wasn’t enough to fix that.

She was right.

She broke it off.

Steve was devastated, and leaned hard on Bucky. Told him that he would be so much worse off if Bucky weren’t there. That he loved him.

It was the first time either of them had said it since Bucky fucked everything up by confessing his love to someone who didn’t feel the same way. And Steve meant it the way they used to. He loved Bucky as a friend.

Still, Bucky started to yearn again.

( _Had he ever stopped yearning?_ )

❄︎ ❄︎

And that was just how it was for years. Steve and Bucky got back to normal, sans sex, and all the while, Bucky quietly longed for more. But he learned his lesson. He’ll never _ask_ for it, not again. He can’t lose Steve again, so he’ll take him any way he can. If that means all they’ll ever be is best friends, that’s all right. Best friends is enough.

Or…almost enough, anyway.

Fast forward about seven years of living inside each other’s pockets again, just like they used to as kids, until this past summer, when the high school Bucky spent four of those years teaching at suddenly faced a huge funding cut. And all at once, Bucky no longer had a job.

Three days later, George had a heart attack.

Bucky rushed home at once. He thanks every deity he can think of every day that his dad didn’t die on that operating table. That he’s still around, even doing okay. But he was severely weakened, and had to stop working.

At that point, Steve came up to visit, and he and Bucky sat down at a quaint little coffee shop in town for a serious talk.

They both knew it was coming, so when Bucky sighed, and said, “I think I have to move back in with them for a while. They need me around right now, and I can’t afford our place without a job,” Steve just nodded, resigned.

He hugged Bucky extra hard before he drove his bike back down to the city.

Thus began a few pretty dark months in Bucky’s life. He was broke, anxious, directionless, and stuck in his old hometown without the one person who had made this town worth something. His confidence was terribly shaken, and there wasn’t even anyone in this tiny, conservative town who he could get to fuck him.

Which is how _this_ happened.

One thing about Bucky is that he _really_ likes lingerie. Specifically, he really likes _wearing_ lingerie. Especially when there’s someone around to drool over how fucking _hot_ he looks in lingerie.

So there was Bucky, with a suitcase full of lingerie, and a drawer full of sex toys, in deep need of validation, with absolutely no one to give him any.

One night, Bucky was taking selfies on his bed, in his lingerie, trying to boost his own confidence. He tried a few angles, including a few that showed off his body and mouth, but not his eyes, and...he looked _good._ He’s always thought his mouth is one of his best features — pouty, pink lips that were made to be bitten. Made to look good wrapped around something. 

Also, without the rest of his face visible, the photos were pretty anonymous.

Struck with an idea, Bucky created a brand new Twitter account, with no link to his real name, or any of his existing social media accounts, and tweeted his favorite of the pictures he took.

He was really only looking for a few likes, maybe a reply or two. Something to make him feel attractive and wanted again. Instead, when he checked on the account a few hours later, his single selfie had completely blown up. He’d gained almost two hundred followers in just those few hours, and people were replying to his picture to beg him for _more_.

It was such a heady feeling, being _this_ wanted, that Bucky kept at it. And then he quickly realized he could make some money out of this. He was putting enough effort into the photos, and the social media aspect. So he created a website, and started selling whole sets of photos that included lingerie shots, as well as full nudes.

He’s got an eye for it, it turns out. And he’s always been pretty good at flirting, which makes interacting with followers easier. Some people regularly buy every set he puts up, and others pick and choose which sets they want to spend money on. He even has a small but devoted group of people who subscribe yearly, paying for full year’s worth of sets upfront. He always tweets out one of the lingerie shots, or a censored or strategically cropped version of one of the nudes, as a preview for the set, and honestly, he makes decent money from the endeavor.

He also _likes_ it. Likes posing, likes framing the photos, likes the editing and the flirting, and _especially_ likes how much confidence he gets from all of the external validation.

❄︎

And that’s how Bucky ended up here, putting the final touches on the set he shot this morning.

There’s one photo in particular that he’s really proud of. It’s one of the ones where he’s fully nude, but he’s angled in a way where his dick isn’t visible. His chest is flat against his bed — which is dressed up and set so that just in case a member of his family ever came across these pictures, they wouldn’t easily recognize it as his bed — his back arched obscenely so his ass is high up, knees on the mattress, and bent so his feet are in the air, toes pointed elegantly. His face is turned toward the camera, but it’s tucked into the crook of his elbow, arm outstretched, hiding his eyes and forehead, and even most of his hair. All you can see is his mouth, and he’s _smiling_. Big, and demonstrably happy.

Bucky doesn’t often smile in these photos. The sexy smolder, and the parted lips look, go a long way toward making his fanbase happy. But he likes to throw one or two smiling shots in the mix here are there, and this shoot was _fun_. He knew, even as he was posing, that he looked fucking _good_ today. And that joy is clear on his face, even though the camera only sees half of it.

He pulls up his ‘model Twitter,’ as he euphemistically calls it in his head, and tweets out the picture, with the caption: _This year, I’ll let you light my menorah._ 😘🕎 — this is technically a Hanukkah set, after all, complete with tiny Stars of David and, indeed, menorahs on some of the lingerie pieces and toys he used — along with a link to the entire set for purchase. Then, he pockets the pay-as-you-go phone he uses exclusively for this particular work, knowing he’ll be replying to tweets, DMs, and a few emails for a while, and heads downstairs to his family.

When he gets down there, Becca and his dad are lounging in the living room, watching _Full-Court Miracle_ — a Disney Channel Original Movie about Hanukkah and high school basketball (yes, really), and one of Becca’s unironic favorites — and he can smell the telltale aroma of Hanukkah food, which means his mom is in the kitchen.

Bucky bypasses the living room, figuring he’s been holed up in his room most of the day, and he ought to help his ma out with the preparations for tonight. Also, he just really likes this part of the holidays, he always has.

Winnie isn’t at all surprised to see him when he walks into the kitchen with a soft greeting.

“Hi, sweetie,” she greets back, smiling warmly at him. “You get some work done?”

Bucky’s family knows he’s been making money doing what he’s referred to as ‘freelance’ to them, but none of them have asked him to explain any further. Not even about why he has a separate work phone he won’t let anyone look at. He thinks they have some idea that whatever he’s doing, he doesn’t really want to talk about it with them, and the fact they’re all willing to both respect his privacy, and trust him enough to not be worried about it, genuinely warms Bucky’s heart. He may not be thrilled to be in a position to have to live with them again, but he loves his family. A lot. His frustrations have absolutely nothing to do with _them_.

“Yeah,” Bucky replies, walking over to the spot on the counter where Alpine, his all-white cat child, is sitting primly, front feet together, observing her kingdom and waiting to be hand-fed any of the food being prepared. He plants a little kiss on the top of her head, which she butts into, and scritches behind one of her ears. “Productive day.”

“Good,” Winnie says happily. “You wanna check on your dough? Should be about risen by now.”

Bucky hums his agreement, and leaves Alpine where she is to go get the covered bowl his dough has been rising in and check on it. He hums again, in satisfaction this time, when he lifts the towel off of it to find the dough has perfectly doubled in size.

Winnie smiles to herself at the sound of Bucky’s hum, knowing exactly what it means. She’s working on the savory parts of tonight’s meal, while the sweet ones are traditionally Bucky’s domain.

Ever since he was about ten, the sufganiyot has been his job. He’s always been an anxious person, and the methodical step-by-step structure of baking was something that helped him calm down and parse through his thoughts from a young age. Even now, as he’s punching down the dough, and then flouring a section of his mom’s fancy-ass quartz countertop, Bucky’s mind is already feeling soothed.

There’s soft, jazzy Christmas music playing over the kitchen’s bluetooth speaker as they work. It might feel disparate to other people, but the Barnes family has always celebrated both holidays. Winnie’s family is Jewish, but George’s is Catholic, which means their family follows a unique mix of traditions.

Bucky rolls out his dough, and feels calm.

“You know Aunt Sarah’s coming over tonight, right?” Winnie asks after a few moments of quiet.

Bucky glances at his mom over his shoulder. “I didn’t, actually,” he tells her. He isn’t terribly shocked, though. Sarah often comes over to celebrate holidays with the Barneses, even if they’re not holidays she typically celebrates on her own.

“Oh, well she’ll be here for the lighting, and then dinner,” Winnie informs Bucky.

He nods into the dough he’s now rolling out, even though his mom probably can’t see it. “Did you know Steve might not make it for Christmas?” he asks.

“Oh, honey!” Winnies cries, sad and sympathetic. “No, that’s terrible!”

“He’s not sure yet,” Bucky clarifies. “Says he’s trying, but he’s busy with work. So.” He shrugs, one-shouldered.

Winnie doesn’t push it, which Bucky is grateful for. He kind of suspects she might know exactly the nature of Bucky’s feelings for Steve, but she’s never brought it up with him.

It’s really fucking nice of her.

After Bucky has cut out all the donuts he can from his dough, left them to rise again, and whipped up a fresh, homemade jelly to fill them with later, he still has some time to kill. So he kisses his mom on the cheek, and heads into the living room.

The Jewish kids playing basketball are…doing something related to basketball — Bucky’s gay, and an English major, he doesn’t care about sportsball — so Bucky drops sideways onto the unoccupied loveseat, his head resting on one arm, legs propped up on the other, and pulls out his work phone to answer a few DMs.

Oh. _Wow_.

Apparently that picture he chose as a preview for the set is being _very_ well received.

Bucky is used to some amount of attention when he shares his admittedly pretty hot body with the internet, but this particular shot is getting a _lot_ of attention. It’s being retweeted like crazy, and his set is apparently already selling pretty decently. Which. Thank _god_ , really, because Bucky needs the cash.

He’s also gained a _ton_ of new followers over it, holy shit.

Knowing he’ll get deeply distracted the moment he looks at his notifications, Bucky goes into his DMs first. There are always fewer of them than the notifications, and he can make his replies more personal when it’s private, so he tries to answer as many of the not-creepy and not-demanding ones as he can (the creepy ones and the demanding ones get their senders promptly blocked).

But wow, he has a lot of these, too. Most of them are really nice and complimentary, and he recognizes several of his regulars right away.

And then his eyes fall on a DM from a Twitter user that hasn’t _ever_ interacted with Bucky’s model account before, but one that he knows instantly. One that he knows _well_.

User @art_mad91. The dorkiest username in the world. A personal twitter account, with no real name attached to it, belonging to one Steven Grant Rogers.

Steve just DMed Bucky on his porn account.

_Shit_.

Panicking, Bucky taps on the message.

_Hey, Winter._

That’s how it starts, and Bucky is already sweating. ‘Winter’ is the name he uses on this account, and on his website, to keep it away from his real name. It’s a subtle play on Snow White, because, though Bucky can tan easily in the sun, he’s naturally very fair, his hair is dark, and his lips are always red. But now _Steve is using it to talk to him oh fuck oh fuck—_

Bucky forces himself to keep reading while Alpine jumps up onto his stomach and starts kneading her paws into his flesh.

_Someone I follow rt’d your most recent picture, and I was so struck by it, I ended up scrolling through your entire feed. Holy FUCK you’re gorgeous. And your photos are so artistic and beautiful!! You’ve got an amazing eye._

_Anyway, just wanted to tell you that._ ❤️ _I bought your set from today, hope that’s okay. You’re stunning._

And that’s it. That’s all he wrote.

Bucky blinks a few times, trying to keep his breathing even, as the primary basketball child lights a menorah in the background. Okay.

Okay.

Breathe, Barnes. _Think._

Okay, so Steve found his porn account. Steve found his porn account, and DMed him to tell him he’s gorgeous? Steve found his porn account, and _bought his set_ , which means Steve now has pictures of Bucky, completely and openly nude. And hard. And…deepthroating a glass dildo, Jesus _fuck_.

And _oh_ _fuck_ , Bucky just remembered the Star of David plug he’s proudly wearing in some of those shots.

Okay. No. Okay.

Does Steve know it’s Bucky? That’s the question that _needs_ answering right now. Because if he does, Bucky is facing a _very_ awkward conversation, _very_ soon.

But if he doesn’t….

Alpine settles down, curled up on Bucky’s belly, and Bucky reads over the DMs again, looking for clues.

Steve calls him ‘Winter,’ not ‘Bucky.’ If he knew it was him, why would Steve call him by his pseudonym? Why wouldn’t he just call him by his name?

Point for Steve not knowing, then. What else?

It’s a little hard to tell, but the rest of the message feels marginally less personal than Steve’s usual correspondence with Bucky. It’s certainly friendly, but it could just be friendly in the way Steve is to everyone. Actually, now that Bucky is reading them for a third time, the only thing about the DMs that might make him think Steve knew it was him is the fact that he said he ‘hopes it’s okay’ that he bought the photos Bucky put up for sale. But, honestly, Steve is the kind of guy who would say that to porn actor he doesn’t know.

Fuck. Okay. He probably doesn’t know.

That’s good. That’s _good_. Steve probably doesn’t know, and Steve…thinks Bucky’s gorgeous. Wow. Oh, _wow_.

Bucky taps on Steve’s profile, and yup, there it is. That little ‘Follows you’ banner is right there, next to Steve’s display name (which, for the record, is ‘FIGHT ME, BITCH 😘’ because Stevie is a _dork_ ). Steve is one of his new followers. Steve saw Bucky’s body, in all its naked glory, and wants _more_.

_Fuuuck_.

Before he can overthink this even more, Bucky types out a response as though Steve were just another one of his followers.

_heya, fight me!_

_thanks so much for all of your lovely comments! i’m so glad to see you’ve followed me. welcome to this particular holiday party._ 😉

_buying the sets is ALWAYS okay. even encouraged! today’s set was a lot of fun to shoot, and i hope it brings you some holiday cheer. feel free to think about me during your personal time._ 😘

_your virtual sweetheart, winter_ ❄️❤️

It’s a variation on the message he tends to send to all new followers who reach out to him in his DMs. Bucky very nearly doesn’t add the part where he blatantly encourages people to jerk off to him. But if he wants Steve not to find out it’s him, he needs to not be too familiar with him, which means he needs to treat Steve like any other customer. And if he’s treating Steve like any other customer—well, that involves some level of suggestive flirtation.

Okay. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

Bucky takes a deep breath, glances over to where Becca and their dad are both asleep on the couch, and starts answering a few more DMs. He’s replied to three or four, and almost convinced himself that he can forget about the fact Steve might _jerk off to Bucky’s pictures later, holyfuckholyfuckholyfuck_ , when another new message comes in.

Another new message _from Steve_.

_Oh trust me, Winter, I will be thinking about you for a LONG time._

As Bucky’s face is flushing hot at that message, one more appears.

_And you can call me Steve._ ❤️

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_. Steve is flirting with him. With Winter, anyway, but still. Steve. Is flirting. With Winter.

_thanks, steve_ 😘

Bucky thinks about it for a second, but then, before his brain realizes how fucking stupid this is, he types out another message, and hits send.

_i’ll be thinking about you, too._

❄︎

Steve keeps DMing Winter. And Bucky, as Winter, keeps DMing right back. He’s certain, now, that Steve doesn’t know that Winter is actually the guy he’s been best friends with since birth. Steve flirts _heavily_ with Winter, in a way he obviously doesn’t with Bucky. Clearly wants to fuck the shit out of him. Bucky finds himself, sometimes, feeling jealous of his own alter ego.

And yeah, it’s _Bucky_ who’s writing to Steve. _Bucky_ who’s reading his messages. But _Steve_ doesn’t know that. Steve wouldn’t be acting like this if he did, that Bucky is sure of. Winter is a fantasy — even for Bucky. And Steve _knows_ that Winter is a fantasy. To him, Winter’s just some guy on a screen, who gets naked and shows off for strangers, who Steve can imagine fucking, but they both know he never will.

As things between Steve and Winter get hotter, Bucky and Steve’s regular phone conversations have remained mostly the same. Which is another reason Bucky is confident that Steve doesn’t know Winter is him. There’s maybe a _touch_ more affection coming from Steve in their calls than usual, but that’s not at all atypical for that sweet man during the holidays. It doesn’t mean anything.

Five nights of Hanukkah pass by, and each night, Bucky’s true miracle is all the things Steve begins to say to Winter. The fantasies he begins to share. The way he writes, on the fourth night, _Fuck but I wanna touch you. Watch that mouth of yours suck on my thumb, think about how it’d look around my cock. You’re perfect, Winter. I hope you know that._

And then, on the sixth day of Hanukkah, the miracle runs out. Steve calls Bucky with some bad news.

“I got a last-minute commission for an advertisement,” he says, sounding at once excited and disappointed. “The company’s unhappy with the direction they were going with the ad campaign, and they decided to completely change directions. They want something like the old-fashioned Arrow Collar ads, and they picked _me_ , Buck! They want _Leyendecker_ , and they picked _me!_ ”

“That’s amazing, Stevie!” Bucky cries, thrilled, not understanding the ramifications of this yet. “I’m so fucking happy for you!”

“I know, thank you,” Steve gushes. “But it means I have to work through Christmas.”

_Oh_.

Bucky’s heart drops.

“I’m so sorry, pal.” He really sounds it, too.

“No, Stevie, it’s okay,” Bucky tells him firmly. “Really, it’s fine. You _gotta_ do this, buddy, this is such an incredible opportunity!”

Steve lets out a soft little laugh. “Yeah,” he agrees shyly. “It really is.”

“You’re gonna be huge, Stevie,” Bucky tells him for not even close to the first time. “You’re so talented, you fucking _deserve_ this.”

Steve hums noncommittally. “I’m just bummed as hell I can’t come spend Christmas with you, Buck,” he sighs.

“Don’t be,” Bucky assures him, even though he’s practically heartbroken himself. But he _hates_ it when Steve is sad, way more than he cares about his own feelings. He’d do anything to keep Steve from being sad.

Which—oh.

Fine.

Fuck it.

“You’re still gonna see me,” Bucky tells him, deciding on the spot. “I’ll be at your weird bar-hopping ‘party’ on Friday.”

“You will?!” Steve gasps. He sounds absolutely fucking _delighted_ , and something about that makes Bucky _really_ happy. “Yay! Buck, I’m so glad! You wanna stay over?”

“I think I probably should,” Bucky says. “I imagine we’re gonna be closing the clubs down, right? There’s no way I can drive back to Connecticut at three in the morning, absolutely plastered.”

Steve laughs. “Yeah, let’s not have you do that,” he agrees. “ _God_ , Bucky, I’m so fucking excited you’re gonna be here in _two days!_ ”

Bucky can’t help his grin. He can’t help the way his cheeks light up, the way his heart flutters. “Me too, Stevie,” he murmurs. “See you the day after tomorrow.”

“Can’t wait, I can’t _wait!_ ” Steve says excitedly. “See you soon, Buck! Love you.”

“Love you, too, Steve,” Bucky says, and means it so much he could burst with it.

Almost the moment Steve hangs up, Bucky calls Sam, who answers after a few rings.

“Hey,” Sam’s warm voice greets him. “Since Steve was talking to you mere seconds ago, I thought you might want this to be private, so I had to leave the apartment.”

Bucky laughs. Sam is a good friend. He’s one of the only people who Bucky has actually talked to about still being in love with Steve, after all these years. He didn’t even plan on telling him, not really. Sam and Steve were in the same frat at NYU, and Bucky had always relegated Sam to one of _Steve’s_ friends, not his own. But then there was that one karaoke night where he and Sam bonded, and somehow, a week or two later, while they were out getting coffee together, Bucky found himself spilling his guts to Sam, who proved to be both an excellent listener, and a _really_ good bro.

“I need you to run interference,” Bucky tells him now.

“On Friday?” Sam asks him. His voice echoes. Bucky’s pretty sure he’s in the stairwell right now.

“Yeah,” Bucky confirms. “I just know I’m gonna get drunk, and blurt out something _really_ fucking stupid, so I need you to make sure I don’t do that in Steve’s hearing.”

Sam hums thoughtfully. Bucky hears a heavy door open, and then street noises. Which means Sam is outside now, putting a _lot_ of fucking distance between himself and Steve in the apartment.

“Why do you think you’re gonna blurt out something stupid this time?” Sam asks carefully. “You haven’t when you’ve gotten drunk around him before.”

“Uh,” Bucky says eloquently, brain stalling out a little. “Well.”

He can practically hear Sam’s eyes narrow. “What happened?”

“Steve found my model account,” Bucky tells him quietly.

“Oh, shit,” Sam hisses. He’s _also_ pretty much the only person in the world who knows about Bucky’s alter ego. “He know it’s you?”

“No,” Bucky answers confidently. “But he keeps DMing Winter, and it’s just…a _lot_ , and I’m worried I’ll spill secrets.”

“Okay,” Sam says. It sounds like he’s already concocting a plan. “All right, fair enough. I got you, don’t worry.”

“Well, I’m _gonna_ worry,” Bucky tells him wryly. “That’s what I _do_.”

Sam cackles. “Well, don’t worry _too_ much,” he amends. “Get yourself here, have a good time. I’ll make sure you don’t blab.”

A gusty sigh rattles out of Bucky’s entire body. His shoulders relax.

“Thanks, Sam.”

❄︎

It takes about two and a half hours to drive from Bucky’s hometown to his old apartment in Brooklyn. He leaves early in the day so that he can avoid the start of rush hour traffic, and arrives in the late afternoon. Steve’s bike is parked parallel to the wall at the front of the parking space he pays for, to make room for Bucky to park his car in the same space, like they used to when they shared the space while this was Bucky’s home, too.

God, it’s already weird being back here, a place he once called _home_ , that just…isn’t anymore. No matter how much he wishes it still were.

Bucky cuts the engine, and texts Steve to tell him that he’s arrived, then gets out of the car and pulls his overnight bag out of the trunk. As he shoulders it, he has a weirdly strong urge to look at his DMs from his model account — _did Steve message Winter while Bucky was on the road?_ — but he left his work phone at home, turned off and tucked safely into the suitcase full of his…work stuff. Bucky knew he’d be tempted to answer any and all messages Steve sends him this weekend, and he will _absolutely_ get caught if he tries to chat with Steve as Winter, while actually _staying with Steve_.

And he never signs onto his model account from any device other than his work phone. As tempting as it is to just open an incognito window on his browser….

No. Nope. He has these precautions for a reason, he can’t let his lonely heart and lonely dick lead him into temptation, he can’t.

Bucky isn’t even halfway to the elevator that’ll take him up to the apartment levels from the underground parking garage, when the elevator doors slide open, and Steve comes bounding out of them, directly towards him.

_God, he’s so beautiful_ , Bucky’s mind traitorously says, as his face traitorously breaks into a huge grin.

Steve is loping at him like an enthusiastic golden retriever, all dazzling smiles and golden hair — that’s gotten _long_ in the few months since Bucky has seen him in person, wow — and his _really_ unfairly attractive beard, which he _definitely_ did not have a few months ago.

_I love him_ , Bucky thinks, not for the first time (not even for the hundredth), as he opens his arms just in time for Steve to tackle him in a huge, laughing, squeezing hug. _God fucking help me, I love him so fucking much._

Steve smells incredible as he squeezes Bucky just this side of too tight, one hand on the back of Bucky’s head, his nose tucked into Bucky’s neck. His beard is scratchy, but soft against Bucky’s collarbone. He smells like warmth, and clean laundry, and a little bit of pleasant musk.

He smells like _home_.

Bucky very nearly bursts into tears on the spot from just the familiarity of Steve’s smell.

“Jesus fuck, I missed you,” Steve laughs into Bucky’s shoulder. “I _hate_ how long it’s been since I’ve seen you in person.”

“Me too,” Bucky agrees wholeheartedly, feeling raw. He’s hugging Steve back just as fiercely, arms tight around his back and small fucking waist, his face tucked into Steve’s neck, eyes closed to concentrate only on the man encompassing him. “Five fucking months, pal.”

“ _Way_ too long,” Steve concurs. “Not doing that again, okay?”

“Sounds good, Stevie.”

It’s been five months only because Bucky has been busy helping out his family, and didn’t feel like he could get away for a fun trip into the city while they struggled without him (even though none of them have ever said _anything_ like that to him — he still knows they would struggle, and he can’t just leave them to that), and Steve’s work as an artist has miraculously blown the fuck up this year, leaving _him_ no time to make a trip up to Connecticut. It’s not like they had much choice in the whole thing. It’s not like they really _can_ promise to see each other more often going forward.

But pretending like they can still feels…good. Hopeful. Maybe they’ll manage to keep this promise.

Maybe.

After a long time just holding tightly onto each other, they finally let go of each other at the same moment, though Bucky doesn’t want to ever move out of this embrace. Still, he has to, so he does.

He’s rewarded with a giant, eye-crinkling smile from Steve, and a clap on his shoulder.

“How’s Alpine?” Steve asks, staring into Bucky’s eyes, and making it entirely too hard for Bucky to not outwardly melt.

“She’s great,” he replies. “She runs the house, everyone spoils her rotten. Still think she misses you,” he adds, swinging out an elbow to nudge Steve fondly.

Steve laughs, and it booms around the parking garage in a loud echo. “Think you might be projecting, pal,” he says, taking Bucky’s bag off of his shoulder and swinging the strap over his own head before Bucky can protest.

And. Well. Steve’s not wrong, is he?

Bucky rolls his eyes anyway. “Sure,” he says, intentionally patronizing, “whatever you say.”

“Jerk,” Steve laughs under his breath.

“Punk,” Bucky shoots back automatically.

The blindingly happy smirk Steve gives him in response clenches something in Bucky’s gut, and he suddenly has the overwhelming impulse to lean in and kiss those curled lips.

_Fuck_ , Bucky thinks as Steve starts leading him toward the elevator, _I am so fucking fucked._

They make easy conversation in the elevator — light, nothing topics, and casual teasing in that way that’s always been so simple between them, two people who have known each other since before either of them can even remember.

“Oh!” Steve says as the elevator doors open on his floor, like he’s just remembered something. “Happy Hanukkah!”

Bucky laughs, digging in his pocket for his keys as he leads the way down the hall. “Thanks,” he tells Steve. “Just like I’ve said for the _last seven days_ that you’ve said that to me.”

“Hey,” Steve argues, grinning at Bucky when he glances at him over his shoulder, “there are eight nights of Hanukkah, you get eight ‘happy Hanukkah’ wishes. I don’t make the rules.”

“Don’t you?” Bucky asks, eyes narrowed, as they get to the right door, pulling out his keys to unlock it before he realizes what he’s doing. “Oh,” he says softly, looking down at the keys in his hand. He actually does have his old key — Steve and Sam both told him to keep it, “For emergencies, or for when you stay over,” they’d said — but it almost feels… _wrong_ to be opening the door himself when technically he’s a _guest_ here, and Steve is his host.

But Steve scrunches his eyebrows together, still smiling, like Bucky is being weird. “Go ahead,” he prompts lightly. “What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?”

Bucky rolls his eyes again at the teasing. But, truthfully, he needed the permission. Given it now, he quickly unlocks the door to his home for almost nine years. This home that isn’t his anymore.

It looks very much the same as it used to, is the thing. The furniture is the same, and in mostly the same spots. The only difference is where there used to be Bucky’s things, there are now Sam’s. Sam’s coats hang on hooks next to Steve’s by the door. Sam’s books and DVDs line the right-hand built-in shelves. Sam’s trinkets and tchotchkes are sprinkled around the living room. And if Bucky were to go look inside the mug cabinet, he knows he wouldn’t see his own eclectic collection of mugs — those are carefully packed up in a box in his parents’ garage — but Sam’s.

Steve’s touch, a hand squeezing his arm, pulls Bucky from his melancholy. “I’m gonna put your bag in my room, okay?” Steve tells him, jerking his head down the hallway to their right. “Make yourself at home, because you are.”

And then Steve _winks_ , and disappears down the hall, and Bucky’s knees almost give way at how fucking _sweet_ that just was.

“I can sleep on the couch!” Bucky calls belatedly after Steve, who has already gone through the last door down the hall on the left. “You don’t have to give me your room.”

Steve comes back out, sans overnight bag now, giving Bucky that look like Bucky is being weird again. “Please,” he says dismissively. And that must be his last word on that, because the next thing Steve does — while he’s pushing his long, slightly curling hair out of where it’s fallen over his face — is give Bucky a little once-over as he passes him on the way to the kitchen, and say, “Don’t remember you spending so much time standing in the entryway, but you do you, I guess.”

That startles a laugh out of Bucky, forcing the awkward stiffness to shake out of his bones. He follows Steve to the breakfast bar, settling himself on one of the stools, while Steve holds his hair back with a hand on the top of his head, grabs the baseball cap that’s sitting on the breakfast bar, and then hitches it on, backwards.

“Oh, _no_ ,” Bucky tells him bluntly, and reaches out to take that ridiculous hat right back off of Steve’s too-pretty-for-it head.

Steve laughs at the removal. “What?” he demands, trying to take the hat back. But Bucky holds it out of his reach on his other side.

“You look like such a frat bro like that!” he protests.

But then Steve gets _right up in Bucky’s space_ to reach both arms on either side of him, going for the cap. And Bucky is so distracted by how close Steve is, how near his lips are to Bucky’s, how warm his arms feel totally surrounding Bucky like this—that he completely forgets he’s playing keep-away, and basically hands the cap right back over to Steve.

“I hate to break it to you, Mr. Ivy League,” Steve says smugly, like he’s won something, pulling back again and shoving that dumb cap back on his dumb head, still backwards and _dumb_ , “but I _was_ in a frat.”

Bucky wrinkles his nose. “Disgusting.”

Steve cackles, and circles the breakfast bar to head to the fridge. “You wanna pre-game?” he asks Bucky over his shoulder.

Bucky groans. Loudly. “Frat! Bro!” he cries, making huge gestures at Steve with both arms.

Steve pauses and looks back at him, holding the refrigerator door open. “Is that a yes?”

“With _water_ , yeah,” Bucky tells him, and ignores it when Steve rolls his eyes before ducking into the fridge. “We’re thirty, pal.”

“Hey now,” Steve protests, reappearing with a water bottle, which he tosses to Bucky, and a bottle of beer for himself, “ _you’re_ thirty. _I_ won’t be thirty till next year.” He sets the edge of the bottle cap against the counter, and slams the top with the heel of his hand, sending the cap clattering to the floor, the _absolute frat bro, Jesus Christ._

Bucky fixes Steve with his most cuttingly unimpressed glare, while Steve takes a sip from his beer, looking _way_ too pleased with himself.

“You are six-and-a-half months shy of thirty, Steve,” Bucky tells him dryly. “Isn’t your body deteriorating yet?”

But that self-satisfied grin on Steve’s face only grows. “Nope,” he says, and then gestures down his whole body. “Specimen.”

_Yes, you are_ , Bucky thinks, indescribably thankful that Steve has already turned his head to take a longer pull from his beer by the time Bucky’s eyes drop involuntarily to his insanely defined shoulders, then skim down the taper of his torso to the smallest waist Bucky’s ever seen on a man Steve’s size.

Okay, Bucky needs out of this particular conversation _right_ now.

“Where’s Sam at?” he asks. It’s probably pretty obvious he’s changing the subject, shit.

But Steve doesn’t seem to notice. “He’s picking up Nat,” he answers easily. “Should be back pretty soon.”

Bucky hums and nods, taking a drink from his water bottle. “How’s that going?” he asks when he’s swallowed.

Steve shrugs, one-shouldered. “The same, pretty much,” he says. “They both know how they feel about each other, and they’re both in agreement that they think long distance is hard, but it can work — so long as there’s a definite end. Until they can see a definite end, they’re not willing to put their friendship at risk for something neither of them is convinced will survive the distance. Especially with the time difference.”

He’s rattling it all off like he’s repeating something he’s heard one or both of them say multiple times now, which makes the corners of Bucky’s mouth pull into a small smile.

“That is the same,” he agrees, nodding again. He takes another sip of water, and then asks, “Wasn’t Sam seeing someone a few months ago?”

“Misty, yeah,” Steve answers. “She’s great. They’re still friends. Not dating anymore.”

Bucky winces while Steve takes a pointed drink of his beer. “Because of…?” he asks, and Steve nods slowly.

“Just like every other relationship he’s had for the past, what? Nine years?”

“Jesus.”

Steve shrugs. “He’s in love with her,” he says simply. “No one else compares.”

That sends a jolt through Bucky’s heart. Steve is looking at him normally, nothing in his gaze that would indicate he knows exactly _how_ close to home that statement hits for Bucky, personally. Still, Bucky has to take a long drink of water to cover for fighting the flush that’s rising in his face before he says anything else.

“You think she knows that?” he asks when he’s able to speak, trying to sound casual.

Steve hums. “I do, actually,” he says. He’s still looking at Bucky, and Bucky is still squirming under his gaze, _especially_ when he adds, “I think she feels the same way about him.” Bucky averts his attention back to his half-empty water bottle while Steve finishes, “You know she’s barely dated since she’s been over there.”

“Alexi,” Bucky points out. “For two years.”

“Yeah, but that ended four years ago,” Steve argues, “and who has she dated since?”

Bucky concedes, making a sort of _good point_ gesture.

They both fall silent for a moment, sipping from their respective drinks. Until Bucky breaks the silence.

“Do you think it’s weird that she’s back for the holidays?”

Steve frowns. “I mean. Yeah?” he answers. “She’s never _not_ been performing during Christmas.”

Natasha has been a principal with the Bolshoi Ballet for the last several years, and was a soloist with them before she made principal. Every year since she moved to Moscow, she’s spent the entire Christmas season rehearsing for, and then performing in the Bolshoi’s production of _The Nutcracker_. She hasn’t been in New York in December for an entire decade.

“Maybe it’s because of her Achilles,” Bucky posits.

Natasha ruptured her Achilles tendon early this year. There’d been a harrowing week or so when it looked like her career as a dancer might be over, and she might be coming home. But her doctors in Russia were optimistic for her recovery, so she chose to stay in Moscow, and the Bolshoi kept her on as an instructor for their ballet academy while her tendon healed. She’s back to dancing form now, but it’s possible she could still be dealing with some issues from her injury.

“Maybe,” Steve agrees thoughtfully. “I hope she’s doing okay.”

“She hasn’t said otherwise to me,” Bucky tells him.

“Me neither,” Steve says, shrugging, “but you know how she is.”

Bucky doesn’t have anything to say to that. He just nods. He _does_ know how Natasha is, always reluctant to admit weakness, even to her closest friends.

When Bucky looks up at Steve again, after another few moments of silence, Steve is gazing at him with something oddly assessing in his expression. Bucky feels pinned, like a butterfly to a card, under that look.

Steve opens his mouth, and Bucky freezes in his seat, absolutely sure that, whatever Steve is about to say, he doesn’t want to hear it.

“Bucky—”

Thank every deity known to man, Steve is interrupted by the apartment door opening, and Sam’s voice calling out a greeting.

Bucky swings around to see Sam in the doorway, Natasha behind him, and leaps off of his stool far too enthusiastically to go hug them both.

The next few minutes are swept up in the chaos of old friends reuniting after a long time, as Bucky hasn’t seen Sam for even longer than the last time he’s seen Steve, and none of them have seen Natasha in over a year.

By the time some order is regained, they’ve all gathered around the sofa and armchairs in the living room. Natasha’s socked feet are in Bucky’s lap, and he’s doing his sacred duty of massaging them, while Sam’s side is serving as her backrest, and Steve is avoiding the whole ordeal by lounging over one of the armchairs.

“So, Nat,” Steve begins once they’re all settled, “how come you could make it home for Christmas this year?”

“Oh!” Natasha says suddenly, like she’s just remembered something, sitting up and reaching for her purse. Sam hands it to her without missing a beat. “That reminds me,” she mutters as she starts digging through the huge bag. After a few seconds’ search, she produces a little white paper bag from a bakery, which she hands to Bucky. “Chag sameach, babe.”

“What?” Bucky asks, genuinely stunned at being handed some sort of baked good out of the blue. He glances inside the bag, and finds a solitary, _delicious_ -looking sufganiyah, as the sweet smell of sugar and carbs wafts over him. “Oh my _god!_ ” he groans appreciatively, and immediately pulls it out and bites into it.

“When she found out you were gonna be here, she _made_ me stop so she could get you that,” Sam tells Bucky fondly over Nat’s head, while Nat herself grins at Bucky’s exuberant reaction to the sweet, pillowy donut. It’s still warm from the bakery, and filled with an absolutely heavenly strawberry jelly. _Fuck_ , it’s good.

“Thank you, Nat,” Bucky says emphatically, mouth still full.

He’s already torn off a piece and handed it over to Steve before he even realizes he’s doing it. He quickly does the same for Nat and Sam to try to cover for this extremely obvious show of favoritism, both of whom give him a look like they know exactly what just happened here.

Fuck, that’s embarrassing. But the thing is, Bucky has been sharing everything with Steve since he was a baby, and vice versa. Aside from those three dark years where they didn’t speak, there has never really been something that one of them had that they didn’t share with the other. It’s not just a force of habit to give Steve a part of anything that Bucky is enjoying, it’s a force of _nature_.

He doesn’t _want_ to keep something nice for himself. He _always_ wants Steve to enjoy it, too.

“I’m not in The Nutcracker this year,” Nat says eventually, as though they didn’t all just eat a donut in between Steve asking her a question and her answer. It pulls Bucky out of his thoughts so he can frown at her in concern.

“Why not?” he asks. He’d already figured that much. If she was in The Nutcracker, she would either be performing right now, or she’d be in the last round of dress rehearsals. Not sitting here with them, on a sofa in Brooklyn.

Nat rolls her eyes, like it’s just some annoying thing, but Bucky doesn’t miss the way Sam’s fingers brush the back of her hand. A small comfort.

“By the time I was declared fit to dance again, they’d already decided on the cast list,” Nat explains delicately. “And it didn’t include me this year.”

“Maybe they just wanted to make sure you have time to heal completely,” Steve offers.

Nat smiles at him. “Maybe,” she agrees.

But when she glances over at Bucky again, he sees the truth in her eyes.

She’s worried she’s being phased out. Relegated down a few tiers. Maybe even pulled from the stage to continue instructing. She doesn’t see a lot of hope in her future at the Bolshoi.

Fuck. Bucky’s heart hurts for her.

Sam hasn’t said anything at all, which leads Bucky to believe he’s fully aware of Nat’s concerns. Whether she’s shared them with him or not.

As for Steve, he seems to read the mood, because he doesn’t pursue the conversation any further. Instead, he stands, casually asking the rest of them what they want to eat before they all go out drinking tonight, and reaching out to fondly ruffle Natasha’s fiery red hair as he passes behind her.

❄︎

Nobody can agree on what to eat, so Steve ends up getting pizza, which was Bucky’s suggestion, because, as he rightfully argues, Bucky hasn’t had New York City pizza in five months, which is a true tragedy. Nat and Sam kind of reluctantly agree, and when he takes his first bite of the sacred food, for the hundred-millionth time in his life, Bucky thanks God for both New York City pizza, and Steve Rogers.

After the pizza has been consumed, and the trash cleared away, the four of them take turns getting changed and ready between Steve’s room, Sam’s room, and the shared bathroom.

Natasha has claim to the bathroom because she needs to curl her hair, and Sam disappears into his room before Bucky can beat him to it, so Steve offers his room to Bucky first, arguing he doesn’t need much time to get ready, and then drops onto the sofa, all long limbs and huge muscles, to scroll on his phone as he waits for his turn.

Admittedly, Bucky thinks as he dresses in the outfit he brought to go clubbing, he may be trying a little _too_ hard tonight to look good. He told himself, while he was packing, that it was only because he wanted to be up to par with everyone else in the Manhattan club scene, but right now, as he’s slipping into his shiny, black, second-skin jeans, ankle boots, and his so-thin-it’s-transparent black shirt — with the v-neck that plunges halfway down his ribcage — Bucky can’t kid himself.

He _knows_ who he’s dressing up for.

The internal admission _almost_ stops him from adding the final touch he brought with him.

But.

_In for a penny_ , he thinks, and shrugs into the simple, but effective leather harness.

It straps across his chest, under his arms, with four O-rings settled evenly over his pecs and shoulder blades, shoulder straps attached to those points. Another strap loops around his neck, meeting at a fifth O-ring right at the vee of his clavicle, two more straps stretching from that ring to the two over his chest, forming the visual of an X over his heart.

A subtle metaphor, it is not, but it’s Bucky’s favorite harness — so special to him he hasn’t even worn it in a shoot yet, which is why he’s okay wearing it tonight, in front of Steve — and it sure elevates the whole look to something truly sexy, on a deeply _fashionable_ level. His hair is down today, his natural, loose curls enhanced by a bit of product and a keen eye. The light blue of his eyes, and the redness of his lips, stand out against all the black.

He looks _hot_.

Bucky smiles at himself in the full-length mirror Steve generally uses to work out in front of, then takes a breath, and opens the bedroom door.

Only to immediately collide with Steve on the other aside.

“Whoa!” Steve cries, reaching out and grabbing any part of Bucky he can to keep him from falling. “Sorry, pal! I—”

But then Steve stops abruptly, and stares down at Bucky’s chest, because he, like Bucky, has realized exactly what he’s caught hold of to keep him upright.

The harness. Steve’s got one hand wrapped around the strap looped over Bucky’s left shoulder, the other hand clutching Bucky’s waist.

Steve blinks. Bucky doesn’t breathe.

“Buck,” Steve says softly, and almost…reverently?

_What???_

Steve’s still just holding onto Bucky, still staring at him. His eyes drift up to meet Bucky’s, and they look _dark_.

“You look really good, Buck,” Steve whispers. And Bucky still can’t _breathe_.

There’s a moment, where they just stare at each other, into each other’s eyes.

And then Steve tilts his head, just slightly. And Bucky thinks he may just give in, and—

Sam’s door opens down the hall, and Steve and Bucky spring apart.

“I’m done, if you want to—” Bucky hears himself blurt out, just as Steve is chattering, “Yeah, I’m gonna get changed!” in a high-pitched, too-happy voice. And then Steve is in his own room, and Bucky is in the hall, and the door clicks shut between them.

And Sam is just standing there — wearing dark jeans, a fitted button down, and a bomber jacket — in between Bucky and the living room, with one eyebrow knowingly cocked.

“You look nice,” Sam says pointedly while Bucky is trying to rush past him unnoticed.

“Haven’t been to the city in a while,” Bucky retorts, going for the fridge because he _really needs some water_ all of a sudden, “but I’m _pretty_ sure that’s what’s expected at the places we’re planning to go tonight.”

“Is BDSM gear expected?” Sam asks, plucking at Bucky’s harness from behind, and then cackling maniacally when Bucky spins around to smack him away.

“It’s _fashion_ ,” Bucky hisses, “and _shh!_ ”

Sam keeps laughing at him. Sam is a dick.

❄︎ ❄︎

Bucky only really has time to chug down a water bottle before Nat comes out, looking absolutely stunning in a short, glittery dress, and curled hair hanging above her shoulders. Steve is ready just minutes after Nat is (unfairly tight t-shirt over skinny jeans and boots, completed by a deeply sexy cognac leather jacket), and then they all have to shrug on winter coats on top of their nice looks, and they’re off to Manhattan to meet up with the rest of their friends, with Sam chanting about how they’re gonna ‘Close! It! Down!’

The subway ride over is crowded, but Bucky absolutely does _not_ think obsessively about how Steve is pressed up against his back because of it. Doesn’t even notice that, if only Steve leaned forward just a little bit, he could mouth at Bucky’s ear if he wanted to. And he _definitely_ doesn’t imagine Steve’s hands on his hips, Steve’s arms around his waist, leaning back into that warm bulk and nuzzling at Steve’s jawline—

Nope. Bucky doesn’t think about _any_ of that. Not even a little.

❄︎ ❄︎

Clint, T’Challa, and Carol are already there when the Brooklyn Foursome (far from being the only ones of their group who live in Brooklyn anymore, but the moniker continues to stick around from the old days when they were) rock up to the first club of the evening. They’ve apparently planned to hit three clubs tonight, going from most fancy to least, so that they can appreciate the class while they’re sober enough, and won’t get kicked out for being disheveled and sloppy in the end. So this one is, as far at their group of late-twenties-to-early-thirties trash monsters are concerned, _very_ nice.

“Who are we missing?” Natasha asks after everyone has had a chance to excitedly hug her and Bucky, the two of the group who haven’t been around lately.

“Jim Morita, and Gabe Jones,” Steve answers. He seems to have been the one who was largely responsible for planning this whole thing, which makes sense considering how strategic the plans for the night are.

“Jim and Gabe are coming?” Bucky asks, delighted about this, and Steve flashes a disarmingly fond grin at him.

“Yeah,” Steve tells him, almost shyly. “I wasn’t sure if any of the Commandos were gonna make it, so I didn’t tell you before. When they confirmed yesterday, I figured it’d be a nice surprise.”

Bucky suddenly has to fight the urge to pull Steve in by his coat lapels, and kiss his mouth.

_What the actual fuck_ , he berates himself in his head as he just grins dopily at Steve instead, _you haven’t done_ that _with him since you were eighteen. Get it the fuck together, Barnes, Jesus._

“It’s a nice surprise,” Bucky confirms finally, trying not to melt at the way Steve is smiling back at him.

The Commandos — the Howling Commandos, if they’re being exact — are the seven of them, including Steve and Bucky, who went to high school together. They were the best of friends as teenagers, all went off to mostly different colleges, still kept in touch as much as they were able, and then all moved to New York City after graduating, immediately falling back in with each other like no time at all had passed.

Jim and Gabe, in particular, were the two people in the entire world who Bucky leaned on when Steve unwittingly broke his heart twelve years ago. Gabe was at Yale with Bucky, and spent many, many nights holding him while Bucky cried, and never once complained. Jim was all the way out in California, at UC Davis, but used to sit on Skype with Bucky while they both quietly did their own homework, just so Bucky wouldn’t be alone to spiral inside his thoughts.

It’s been over a decade since those nights, but Bucky has never forgotten his gratitude to them. He loves Monty, Dum Dum, and Frenchie with his whole heart, but if only two of the Commandos could make it out tonight, he’s _very_ glad it’s Jim and Gabe.

Almost as though summoned by Bucky’s memories, all at once, he’s being practically tackled from behind by two sets of arms, accompanied by two extremely familiar laughs.

Bucky spins around as quickly as he can with the weight of two full-grown men on him, and loses himself in a few minutes of excited hugging, laughter, and declarations of how long it’s been and how unacceptable that is to all of them.

God, Bucky loves these weirdos.

Eventually, Jim and Gabe break off to greet the rest of the group with more hugs, since all of these people are as much their friends now as they are Steve’s and Bucky’s, and then Bucky is being bustled into a line to gain entry into the nightclub.

Bucky ends up at the back of the group, far away from Steve at the front. He’s distracted from shooting _too_ many longing gazes toward that golden head, standing above most of the rest of them, by Jim, Gabe, and Carol all asking him a million questions about how he’s been, and trying to catch him up on five months of their lives before they get inside, where the music may be loud.

Which ends up being quite a feat, indeed, since apparently Steve has gotten their names on some list, somehow, and they’re waved inside, with a flash of their IDs, in not very long at all.

When he gets inside, Bucky almost stops short. He was expecting some kind of crowded dance club, just dressed up a little. But this is not that. Not at all.

The entire place is dimly lit in blues and purples. Silks hang from the ceiling around the entire open floor plan, with aerial performers doing impressive tricks over the heads of patrons who may or may not be paying them any mind. There are cabaret tables of different sizes strategically placed through the space, harboring glowing, orange candlelight in their centers, coordinated LEDs on the ceiling, huge art murals on every wall.

“Good, right?” Steve asks in Bucky’s ear, making him jump. He hadn’t realized Steve was beside him, or close to him at all.

“Yeah,” Bucky answers, turning to Steve only to realize that all of their friends have moved into the room, leaving just the two of them here. “How’d you find this place?”

But Steve just smiles conspiratorially, and offers his arm. Like they’re on a fucking _date_ , or something.

Bucky shouldn’t — he _really_ shouldn’t — but he takes Steve’s arm, and allows this man to guide him inside the club, first to the coat check, where they hand over their winter coats, and then all the way to the back of the room, where the rest of their friends are waiting around a table bearing Steve’s last name.

“I thought we were going dancing!” Natasha cries over the music, and general hum of people, as Steve and Bucky sit down. It’s actually not _terribly_ loud in here, but still enough to require raised voices.

“We are,” Steve tells her, and gestures toward the dance floor in the center of the room. Where absolutely no one who doesn’t clearly work here — all dressed in old-fashioned, Moulin Rouge-esque cabaret costumes — is dancing.

Nat gives him an unimpressed glare, and Steve cackles.

“Just thought we might get some nice drinks first,” he explains. “I swear, the next place is much more dance-heavy.”

“We’re allowed to dance here, though?” Bucky asks.

Steve nods, eyebrows raised as though in question. Bucky just grins, stands, and offers a hand to Natasha, who looks _thrilled_ , and leaps gracefully from her seat to take Bucky’s hand.

“Order us some drinks,” Bucky tells the table at large, as he’s dragged away by an extremely enthusiastic Nat.

So, the thing about ballet dancers, is that they can do _anything_. Ballet is so difficult, technical, precise, and emotive, that once you master it as an art form, any other kind of dance comes relatively easy to you. Also, you’re so used to pushing through pain to make something beautiful, you become terrifying to cross. But that part’s neither here nor there right now, as Natasha wraps both arms around Bucky’s neck, and begins to dance.

It’s not just the kind of simple hip-swaying that most nightclub dancers partake in — although there is a _lot_ of swaying hips — it’s truly a _dance._ Bucky, who took a not-insignificant number of dance classes himself, through his childhood _and_ at Yale, has done this with Natasha enough times that they can really and truly feel each other out here.

He tends to let her lead, because fuck gender roles, and Natasha’s better at this than he is, and she never lets him down. A slight touch to his side, or a gentle pressure against his neck, tells Bucky exactly where he needs to go, what he needs to do, and they move together like they were made for this.

Bucky is laughing with it, with the joy of sharing this with his friend, when Natasha’s touch has them turning around each other, and he catches sight of their table.

Carol, Jim, and T’Challa are watching them dance, and cheer when they see Bucky look their way. Gabe and Clint are engaged in a conversation that looks to be fascinating to both of them. Sam is, predictably, focused on Natasha, a bittersweet look of deep love and deep longing on his face. But Steve—

Steve has his eyes locked on Bucky, something that looks remarkably like hunger in his eyes.

Bucky’s steps falter, and Natasha very nearly steps on his toes before he’s back, tearing his gaze from Steve. He can’t look at that look, not from Steve. It’s too much. Blinding. Like staring directly at the sun.

Natasha doesn’t say anything, at least not yet. But the expression on her face as she watches Bucky is knowing and shrewd.

The song ends a minute later, to a smattering of applause from the audience gathered around their respective tables.

There are drinks waiting for both of them when they return to their friends, and Bucky gratefully sips at his, which is somehow his hard-to-order favorite: a “Pornstar Martini” (yes, he recognizes the irony), a drink he first had as a bartender’s choice at a very hipster speakeasy in Brooklyn, and then quickly learned most bartenders outside of the UK have never heard of the thing. And yet here it is, in all it’s vanilla-and-passionfruit glory, sitting in front of Bucky’s chair, with its traditional side of champagne.

Steve ordered it, Bucky knows. Steve is the only person who could have remembered Bucky’s obscure favorite drink.

It’s not fair. How perfect Steve is. How much Bucky _wants_ him. More than _this_ , more than just as his best friend. It’s not fair that Steve keeps looking at Bucky tonight like he could swallow him whole. That Steve is clearly still attracted to him, even if he doesn’t love him the way Bucky loves Steve. It’s not fair that Steve flirts with him when he doesn’t know he’s flirting with _Bucky_ , that Bucky knows deep in his heart that he would give himself up to Steve if he asked, even if it was just for one night.

_Even if it’s just for tonight._

It’ll break him, but Bucky’s pretty sure he’ll do it. He knows he will, actually. The flutter of anticipation in his gut agrees that this is, infallibly, true.

None of this is fair. None of this has _ever_ been fair.

And so, Bucky busies himself with talking to anyone but Steve as he makes his way through one, and then another two Pornstar Martinis. He spends a while catching up with Jim and Gabe, the rest of the time here laughing with Carol when they’re both tipsy enough to be onset with giggles over just about anything. Steve tries to catch his eye a few times, but Bucky ignores him, and soon enough, it’s time to move on to their second destination.

It isn’t until they’re walking to the second club, through the biting chill of the winter night, that Bucky realizes he didn’t pay for — or, for that matter, _order_ — any of the drinks he consumed at the first place.

He’s still pretty buzzed, despite the frigid wind blowing in his face, so it takes him a minute to find Steve in the traveling group. Something deep inside him knows that Steve is the one he needs to talk to right now.

“How much do I owe you?” he asks when Steve turns to him at the hand Bucky circles around his elbow.

It almost looks like Steve blushes, but clearly that’s just the cold. “Nothing,” he answers. “I’ve got you tonight.”

Bucky almost stops short again, only propelled forward by the fact that Clint is right at his heels, and will probably trample him if he stops suddenly.

“No!” he sputters after a second, raising Steve’s eyebrows up his forehead again. “No, Steve—I’m fine, I can pay for myself.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Steve tells him, lowering his voice a little (Bucky realizes, after a second, that it’s because he lowered his own voice first). “It’s not a pity thing, pal, I just want to do something nice for you, and I’ve got the cash for us both tonight.”

Bucky’s eyebrows furrow together even more, and his lips purse out in what could probably be considered a moue. He doesn’t actually need to say anything else for Steve to understand exactly what he _would_ have said, and laugh softly.

“I made you come out here,” the big sweetheart presses, pulling his elbow out of Bucky’s grasp so he can loop that arm around his shoulders instead, pulling him closer as they walk, Steve’s warmth feeling so much like home that Bucky doesn’t even try to pull away. “You drove down because I asked you to. I’m not gonna let you _also_ pay your own way, okay? I know Hanukkah’s over now,” Steve adds, gesturing around to the dark sky above them, “so consider it an early Christmas present, okay? My gift to you is to get you as hammered as you want to.”

Bucky can’t help but laugh warmly in response. He can convince himself that he’s buzzed enough to explain away the way he snuggles further into Steve’s hold, slipping his own arm around Steve’s small waist. Because he’s buzzed.

“Okay, fine,” Bucky allows, tucking his face into Steve’s shoulder, because he’s _cold._ Buzzed, and cold. “I’ll let you get me drunk, pull my arm.”

And if Steve nuzzles the top of Bucky’s head as he giggles in reply, it’s only because Steve is cold and buzzed, too.

❄︎

The second club is, as promised, a lot more dance-heavy than the first. It’s gorgeous, too, lined everywhere with heavy red curtains, like stage curtains, and lit with a dim, golden light. Leather armchairs are clustered here and there, and an aesthetically-pleasing bar sits to one side, but most of the space is dedicated to the dance floor, where a small crowd is swaying to the rhythmic house music that’s pumping through hidden speakers.

They all hit the bar first, where someone orders a round of shots for them all. Tequila, apparently, which might be dangerous, but at least comes with a built-in chaser, which Bucky appreciates. Shots of shitty, warm, flavored vodka may have been okay when he was twenty, and partying in someone’s dorm with the goal of either hooking up with someone or blacking out, but not so much now that he’s thirty, and his body is slowly dying.

After the shots, Steve presses a glass into Bucky’s hand, and they all move as a herd, like gazelles, onto the dance floor.

They all dance as a group here, too. Which is a _very_ good thing for Bucky, who can no longer bring himself to leave Steve’s side, and who finishes his first drink — a Zombie, maybe? Jesus, Steve wasn’t kidding about getting Bucky as drunk as he wants to get — in a surprisingly short amount of time.

The glass is taken from his hand not too long after it’s just ice.

“Same thing?” Steve asks.

Bucky nods, still dancing, and Steve disappears.

And then Sam appears in Bucky’s vision.

“Doing okay?” he asks when Bucky focuses on him, and Bucky just nods again.

He’s noticed that Sam is keeping close, and he appreciates it a lot. But Bucky isn’t feeling particularly chatty at the moment, content just to let the music flow through him, surrounded by people he loves, tipsy enough to just feel loose and happy. He watched Carol share an ecstasy tab with Nat a few minutes ago, making the transfer with their tongues, but he said thanks but no thanks when they offered him some, too. He feels good. He feels _happy_.

“Okay,” Sam tells him. “I’m gonna go get you some water, sound good?”

Bucky nods a third time, earning him a sweet, gap-toothed grin from Sam before he disappears.

Sam is pretty.

Bucky may be drunk.

He’s vaguely aware that there are people here specifically taking care of him. That Sam and Steve both appear to be significantly less drunk than he is, and that Gabe has checked in with him a couple of times tonight. He’s pretty sure they’re all doing this so that he can feel safe letting loose tonight, since he hasn’t had a chance to let go in a _very_ long time.

Bucky really loves his friends.

He’s been passed around through the group of people he loves a little bit by the time Sam returns with water for him. It seems like Bucky, Carol, and Natasha are the three who the rest of them have collectively decided deserve to get the most fucked up tonight, as when Sam hands Bucky a glass of water, he hands another to Carol, and Clint appears with a third for Nat. It feels nice to be taken care of like this, Bucky thinks. He trusts his friends to do this for him, knowing that they care about him, and knowing that he’s done the same for all of them at one time or another.

Sam stands there and watches until Bucky has downed the entire glass of water, and then takes it back from him and disappears again, presumably to take the empties back to the bar.

But just as Sam leaves, Steve slides into his place in Bucky’s vision. And Bucky _knows_ his face lights the fuck up at the sight of Steve, but he’s too far gone to be able to help it.

Luckily, Steve just grins back at him, and hands him a full shot glass of gold liquid.

When Bucky just kinda looks at it like he’s never seen a shot before, Steve gently touches his side in guidance, and holds up a salt shaker. Ah. More tequila shots.

“Here,” Steve leans in to murmur in Bucky’s ear, and then licks the inside of his own wrist, shaking some salt out, and offering his wrist to Bucky.

It’s intimate, and undeniably sensual, and a little vampiric, Bucky observes with a giggle as he bends his head to Steve’s wrist, licks the salt off of his warm skin. He’s had enough to drink that he gives into desire, and scrapes his teeth lightly over that sensitive skin right before he pulls back. He doesn’t think he imagines the hissing inhale from Steve in response.

Pleased, Bucky downs his shot, accepts the lime Steve hands him — wow, Steve is _so close_ to Bucky right now — and sucks on it as he hands back the empty shot glass. It’s only as Steve places the glass on a tray next to him that Bucky notices the waiter Steve seems to have brought over. He’d figured they were all doing shots again, but a quick glance around reveals that no one else is doing one, and there’s only one more full shot glass on the tray.

Just Bucky and Steve, then.

Well. All right.

Steve is going for the salt shaker again to pour some out for himself, but Bucky reaches out and kind of stumblingly bats his wrist away, offering his own, instead.

Steve looks at him, surprised, his eyes lit up, pupils blown wide. Maybe that’s because of the dim light, Bucky drunkenly tries to reason with his racing heart, but then Steve fingers cradle his wrist with such tenderness, bringing it up to his mouth.

And then Steve’s hot breath blows across Bucky’s skin. And Steve’s wet tongue laves slowly over Bucky’s pale wrist, delicately caressing the lines of his tendons and veins. And Bucky shivers with _want_.

Then the salt, and Steve’s tongue again. Bucky is transfixed by it. Wants it _everywhere._ Wants to feel Steve explore his whole body with that warm tongue.

He watches, darkly, as Steve’s throat bobs with swallowing the tequila. Steve’s eyes don’t leave Bucky’s once as the sucks on his lime. And then he deposits his own empty shot glass back on the tray, and picks up the two drinks there, handing one to Bucky.

They both join back in the group dance, almost trancelike at this point, but Bucky is deeply aware that Steve’s eyes are on him pretty much all the time now. Sam keeps sticking around. And so does Nat, because Nat is now dancing almost exclusively with Sam, though the rest of them are still in one big group. But Bucky feels like it’s just him and Steve here. Him, and Steve, alone in the world. Inevitable.

At some point, some amount of time that he can’t quantify later, Bucky suddenly feels a very deep and urgent need for a smoke.

It’s a habit he kicked years ago. He doesn’t smoke anymore, ever.

_Except_ for when he’s in a very specific mood, at a very specific level of socially drunk. Then, Bucky smokes.

He murmurs something about it to whoever is closest, and then slips his way through the crowd on the dance floor, looking for a patio—no, they went up an elevator to get in this club—a _balcony_.

The cold air is a relief on Bucky’s hot, sweaty face when he finds the balcony. It makes him feel just a little bit clearer. They’re close enough to river here that he can see Brooklyn across the way. Bucky smiles at his favorite place in the world, then looks around for someone to charm a smoke from.

He finds a willing victim in a small group of women, probably in their early-to-mid-twenties, who tell him after just one of his charming grins, and his aw-shucks affected Brooklyn accent, that if he wants another, all he has to do it ask. One of them even lights it for him, balanced between her own lips, before handing it over. He nods and thanks them, and then makes his way toward the railing, to look at home while he smokes.

Bucky can’t say he’s _entirely_ surprised when Steve appears at his side. Steve was probably the one Bucky told he was going for a smoke, anyway. And back when they both used to smoke regularly, they shared more than they smoked their own. The idea was that it meant they were smoking half as much as they otherwise would, but Bucky really just liked putting his mouth somewhere Steve’s had been a moment before.

Wordlessly, and without looking over at him, Bucky hands the cigarette to Steve, who hums in thanks while he brings it to his lips.

They stand there silently like that for a while, looking out at Brooklyn together, where they once shared a home, shared their whole lives, sharing a cigarette now.

It isn’t until they’re getting to the end of it that either of them says anything at all.

“Here,” Bucky says, breaking the silence as he passes the smoke back to Steve. “Last bit’s yours.”

“No,” Steve tells him, “it’s your smoke, you earned it. Finish it off.”

“ _Steve_ ,” Bucky groans, too drunk to argue, shoving the diminished cigarette at Steve, who chuckles, but takes it, thank god.

“Fine,” Steve says. “We’ll share.”

And before Bucky can ask what the hell that even means, understanding too far away on the hazy edges of his consciousness, Steve has inhaled the last good puff from the cigarette, stubbing it out quickly in the nearest ashtray, and then turns to Bucky, one hand on his face, and leans in.

Bucky catches on just in time, breathes in the smoke that Steve breathes out into his mouth, their lips so close, that all it would take to close the distance would just be for one of them to lean slightly forward—

Steve pulls back a little bit once he’s finished shotgunning his smoke to Bucky, but his fingers don’t leave Bucky’s jaw while Bucky tilts his head a little to blow the last of the smoke out into the night. Neither of them breaks the other’s gaze.

Bucky is _seconds_ from throwing caution to the wind, sending it after the smoke, and just _doing this_ — because he knows Steve wants it, he does, he’s not _stupid_ — even though it means breaking his own heart all over again. But then Sam’s voice calls out to them from the balcony’s door, and both of them startle apart for the second time tonight.

“We’re moving on,” Sam tells them. “Carol won’t stop screaming about tacos at the top of her lungs, so we’re gonna find some tacos on our way to the last place.”

God, how much time has passed since they came out tonight? They’re moving on to their final location soon, and Bucky feels like the night has barely even started.

Maybe that has something to do with the distinct thrum of tension that’s been reverberating between him and Steve ever since he walked out of Steve’s bedroom wearing his harness. It feels like there’s something coming that hasn’t yet arrived.

Steve’s hand ends up on the small of Bucky’s back as they follow Sam back inside. They all meet up at coat check, but half of them don’t even don their coats until they’re back downstairs, and outside, and being billowed about by the frigid wind.

That the moment when Bucky’s drink-addled brain registers that there were _heat lamps_ out on the balcony, and _that’s_ why he could stand there, coatless, and smoke without becoming a human popsicle.

Right, yeah, that makes sense.

Steve helps Bucky shrug into his coat, though, and then wraps his arm around him to pull him close again, and that’s _so_ worth the cold.

Steve doesn’t let go as they find a little hole-in-the-wall taqueria, or as they order an insane amount of tacos, or even as they all sit smushed together in a corner booth and consume said insane amount of tacos. In fact, Steve keeps one arm tight around Bucky — first around his shoulders, but eventually around his waist — right up until he has to jump up to help T’Challa corral Clint and Jim, who seem to be trying to make friends with the pigeons outside, through the taqueria’s front windows.

The tacos are gone anyway, and Bucky is feeling more sober than he was before, though he’s still got a nice buzz going, so they all take this moment to unstick themselves from the booth, and each other, so they can head out to the final location.

As they’re filtering out, Bucky feels a hand on his shoulder, and turns to see Sam holding him back.

“What?” Bucky asks, even though he fully knows what this is about.

Sam’s gently raised eyebrow tells Bucky that he is aware of that, so Bucky sighs, and closes his eyes.

“Do you want me to intervene?” Sam asks in a low voice. “I can get him to stop, and he doesn’t need to know you asked me to.”

“I don’t really want him to stop,” Bucky confesses, so quiet, it’s barely a whisper.

“I know,” Sam murmurs back. “But do you _need_ him to?”

When Bucky doesn’t reply except to open his eyes and meet Sam’s, Sam sighs, too.

“You know that sleeping with him is a bad idea, right?”

“Yep,” Bucky replies simply.

Sam narrows his eyes. “You still want me to run interference?”

“I think you’d better,” Bucky tells him honestly. “I’m not making great decisions right now.”

Sam smiles kindly, and swings his arm across Bucky’s shoulders. “I got you, buddy,” he tells him, reaching out to push the door open so they can go join the others.

❄︎

Bucky is so deep in his thoughts after that, that he doesn’t realize where they’re going until T’Challa and Steve are carefully helping Carol and Natasha down a flight of stairs to the subway.

“Why are we getting on the subway?” Bucky complains.

“Because the last club is in Brooklyn,” Sam explains, intentionally condescending, his arm still draped over Bucky’s shoulders as they head downstairs.

Bucky rolls his eyes.

Most of their friends actually do live in Brooklyn, so it probably makes sense to end the night across the river.

Sam does a good job of keeping Bucky and Steve apart on the train without making it _look_ like that’s what he’s doing. And Bucky knows that Sam is helping him out, doing the smart thing. But _Jesus Christ_ , if Steve is willing to give Bucky something, anything, even for just tonight—

Well. Bucky’s made up his mind.

He’s surprised to find out the final club is so close to Steve and Sam’s place, though. He’s never heard of this place before, and he doubts it’s only been around for the last five months.

It’s…wow. Dark, and smoky, with extremely minimal decor. It would be so easy to get lost in here on purpose. Bucky imagines there must be loads of people who choose to dissolve into the smoke, who hide together, lost to each other—

Okay, that’s not a train of thought he should be pursuing right now, Bucky thinks, as images swirl through his mind of big hands, a hot mouth, golden strands of hair fisted in Bucky’s hands.

The club is Havana-themed, the music is all Cuban salsa music, and people are scattered around the place, dancing close and dirty. The atmosphere is dark, and sensual, and this is pretty much the last place anyone who’s trying _not_ to sleep with someone should be.

Steve hands Bucky another drink, standing close enough Bucky can smell him again. God, he loves that smell, loves the man it emanates from. He leans in without even meaning to, and Steve’s hand lands on the back of his neck.

Steve drags Bucky out onto the dance floor. Natasha and Sam are already there, already dancing. The rest of them are still at the bar.

Bucky gets lost in dancing again, intentionally avoiding being caught up with only Steve. It looks like Sam is trying not to be caught up with only Natasha, though, so they stick close, and it works out.

It’s not very long before Carol begs off, her high gone now, leaving her exhausted. T’Challa offers to split a car home with her, since he only lives a few blocks away from her place, and Jim has to work in the afternoon tomorrow, so he leaves with them, everyone exchanging hugs all around before they go. Then it’s only a matter of time before Clint starts yawning, and Gabe lives pretty close to Clint’s place in Bed-Stuy, so they head off together, too, leaving the Brooklyn Foursome alone in the smoke.

But _then_ , only about a half hour after everyone else is gone, Sam pulls Bucky aside.

“What is it?” Bucky asks him, concerned. He’s only had the one drink since they got here, and Sam made him drink more water, so he’s maintained his buzz, but isn’t as drunk as he was at the last place.

But Sam— Sam looks harried.

“I have to go home,” he says urgently. “Are you gonna be okay, or do you want to come with me?”

“Why do you have to go home?” Bucky asks him, frowning. “I thought you were gonna ‘close it down’?”

“I can’t, man,” Sam sighs, “I’m already at the point where if Nat asks me to come home with her, I’m gonna do it, and I’m pretty sure the only thing standing in _her_ way is one more vodka.”

“Do you want to?” Bucky asks, echoing their conversation at the taqueria, just reversed. “Don’t let me asking you for help come between you—”

But Sam’s already shaking his head. “No, man, it’s not about that. Yes, I _want_ to, but I _can’t_. Not like this. I gotta go home, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Bucky assures him. “Go home. I’ll be fine here.”

“You sure?”

Bucky glances over at where Steve and Natasha are dancing together, laughing.

“I think so,” he says. ‘ _I want to, but I can’t_ ,’ Sam said. Bucky wants to. Can he?

“That’s not sure,” Sam points out. “You wanna come back with me?”

Bucky takes his turn to sigh, and shakes his head. Here it is: the choice he’s already made. The inevitability of him and the man he’s been following, chasing, his entire life.

“I never get to come out like this, Sam,” he says, as if they don’t both know the real reason he wants to stay. “I think I’m okay, I just want to enjoy this.”

Sam nods in response. “Okay. Call me if you need to, okay?”

“I will. Thanks, Sam.”

“You got it, Buck.”

Bucky hugs Sam just as hard as Sam hugs him, and when they break apart, he watches Sam go say goodbye to Steve, and then Nat. Nat seems to get it, but she hugs him for a long time, eyes closed and brow furrowed, before she lets him go.

After Sam has left, and Bucky’s rejoined the remaining two, Steve goes back to the bar to get them all some water, and Natasha loops her arms loosely around Bucky’s neck, and just keeps dancing.

It’s kind of a relief, honestly. That she’s okay with just continuing to lose herself inside the melodies and rhythms, not obsessing over the fact that Sam just fled the club because he’s trying not to sleep with her.

Bucky’s come to a different conclusion than Sam. He’s ready to make a different choice. Not a better choice, not at all. Probably a much, much worse one, in fact. But _his_ choice. His own.

Nevertheless, he follows Nat’s lead.

Steve returns shortly, balancing three glasses of water, and sips on his own while he watches Natasha and Bucky drink theirs. When they’re both done, he takes back their empty glasses, and tells them he’s gonna go find somewhere to sit for a while.

“I’m all danced out,” he says to Natasha with a grin when she tries to wheedle him to stay and dance with them more.

Then, with a wink in Bucky’s direction, Steve disappears into the smoke.

The song changes almost as soon as Steve leaves, and the one that begins is slower. Darker. More intimate. A Cuban bolero.

Bucky and Natasha both know this dance. Have danced it together before. The fall into position almost automatically. Closer, even, than they were before. Bucky’s left hand holding Natasha’s right, her other hand high on his shoulder, almost to his neck, and his pressed into the center of her back. Her chin rests against his shoulder, their cheeks together. As they dance, they step between each other’s legs, sometimes hook their legs around each other’s. Bucky sinks into it.

Natasha lets Bucky lead whenever they dance the bolero, goes where he indicates with the slightest shift, or touch, or glance, sometimes. They move together as one, the bolero all elegance and carnal passion. Once, Bucky wonders if Steve is watching them. But he can’t see Steve through the smoke, so he doubts Steve can see them.

One bolero melts into another, into another, and another. And by the time Natasha leans up to kiss Bucky’s cheek and tell him she needs to get going, it’s late. Almost 2:00am.

“ _Naaat_ ,” Bucky whines, “you can’t _go_ , who am I supposed to dance with?” The boleros have faded away into something rhythmic, but still sexy, and Bucky isn’t ready for the night to end.

But Nat’s eyes shift to someone behind and somewhat above Bucky, and before he can turn around, the most familiar deep rumble says in Bucky’s ear, “I’ll dance with you.”

Bucky turns to see Steve right there, so fucking close again, smiling gently down at him with dark, heavily lidded eyes.

He glances over at Natasha, almost like he’s asking permission for this. But she just winks at him, kisses his cheek again, and Steve’s, and then she’s gone. Into the smoke, and away.

Bucky doesn’t hesitate. He turns back to Steve and slips his arms over those broad shoulders. Steve grins, all white teeth and hunger, his huge hands settle on Bucky’s hips. They begin to move together, in time to the music.

They’re both tactile people. They hug and touch casually all the time. But not like this. Not _anything_ like this, not since Bucky was eighteen and in love.

Now he’s thirty, and he’s still in love, and his breath is intermingling with Steve’s as their hips sway together, pressed together. He doesn’t think about it, just lets his body speak for him as he grinds in harder against Steve’s pelvis. And Steve’s body answers by sliding his hands up Bucky’s sides, slow and deliberate, until they’re cupping his face.

Bucky must make some kind of noise then, or maybe Steve sees something in his expression, because he watches a question get answered in Steve’s eyes. And then both of those huge hands begin to slowly card through his hair, fingernails scraping his scalp, pulling his hair back, away from his face, until they’re fisted at the back of his head.

Steve tugs on Bucky’s hair, inside his fists, and tilts Bucky’s face up toward his own, forcing his lips to part. And then he leans in, and Bucky’s heart stops.

Bucky hasn’t tasted Steve’s mouth in twelve years too long, but the way it slots perfectly together with his feels—well, like _home_.

It’s not a tender brush of lips, nor is it a chaste thing. Bucky’s mouth opens to Steve’s inquiring tongue almost at once, and the moan he lets out when that tongue licks inside is downright sinful. He scrapes his teeth over Steve’s lower lip, and Steve sucks on Bucky’s tongue in response.

Bucky is aware that they’re heavily making out in the middle of the dance floor, he is. But he can’t stop. He’s wanted this _so badly_ for _so long_. He doesn’t have any willpower to press pause, or suggest a location change. He doesn’t want to break this spell, not before it absolutely _must_ break. He will take what he’s given. He will take, and take.

After a minute, though, Steve pulls away.

Bucky’s hands are clinging to Steve’s back, Steve’s are still in Bucky’s hair. His bluest-blue eyes search Bucky’s. Another question.

“How drunk are you?” Steve asks this one out loud.

“Not much,” Bucky replies honestly, tilting his face up, shameless, begging for more, _please_. “You?”

Steve smiles. “Not at all,” he says, and then kisses Bucky again.

It’s another minute or two of mouth on mouth, and tongues and teeth, this time accompanied by wandering hands, before Steve breaks it again. But he doesn’t go far.

“Do you want to go home?” he asks against Bucky’s mouth, his lips brushing the syllables across Bucky’s lips like scarlet paint.

“Yes,” Bucky paints on Steve’s lips in return.

And then Steve’s hands find his, and he pulls Bucky through the smoke, and out of the club.

❄︎

The club is only a few blocks away from the apartment, but it still takes some time to get home due to the fact that every time they encounter an object or surface suitable for pushing Bucky up against it and kissing him deeply, Steve takes full advantage of it.

Bucky loses track of…just about everything, really. Steve will get them home, he knows, and just leaves it up to him to do that. There isn’t room inside of his thoughts or feelings to care about anything but the way Steve’s mouth feels on his mouth, his jaw, his throat, and the way Steve’s hands manhandle him around like a doll, gripped around his arms, looped through the straps on his harness. Dragging him to and fro, pushing and pulling, and taking what they want. Bucky will give Steve _everything_.

Finally, they make it to the apartment building, stumbling through the front door, crashing their way through the security door, and at last making it into the elevator, where Bucky is again pushed up against the wall. This time, though, Steve pushes a knee between Bucky’s thighs, and Bucky isn’t able to quiet the moan that emanates from deep in his throat as he grinds down on Steve’s proffered thigh, already achingly hard, and _desperate_.

“Buck,” Steve murmurs, smearing his lips over Bucky’s cheekbone in some approximation of a kiss, “god, _Buck._ ”

Bucky hums in agreement, turning his head to catch Steve’s mouth with his own again. He wants, he wants, he _wants_.

The elevator chimes, and the doors slide open, and Bucky is being yanked off the wall and urgently pulled down the hall.

Steve presses him up against the apartment’s door, too, apparently unwilling to stop kissing him long enough to get it unlocked, and the only reason Bucky doesn’t fully fall through when the door does open is because Steve’s arms are so tightly wound around his waist, around his back, that he has no room to fall.

After the lock has been haphazardly thrown behind them, Steve walks Bucky backwards all the way down the hall to his room at the end, kissing him wildly the entire time. There is no talking about it, about what they’re doing. No questions to be asked. No time to kill, or space to fill.

They both know _exactly_ what they’re here for.

The moment Steve’s bedroom door is shut behind him, Bucky finally takes some initiative himself, shoving his weight back against Steve, and pushing _him_ against the door this time.

He drops to his knees.

Steve sucks in a breath at the image of Bucky on his knees in front of him, looking up in worship at this perfect, beautiful man. He brushes a thumb over Bucky’s bottom lip, and asks, “You wanna?”

Bucky just nods eagerly, already popping open the fly on Steve’s jeans. He bites down on his lip, eyes fluttering, when he realizes Steve isn’t wearing anything underneath.

Bucky has absolutely no patience right now. He hasn’t had Steve in his mouth, or in his body, in _twelve fucking years_ , and he refuses to let that go on even one moment longer. So Steve’s jeans only get pulled open and shoved down enough to give Bucky full access to what he wants before he takes Steve’s pretty, half-hard cock in hand, then looks up at him through his eyelashes to make sure he’s still on board.

What he sees is pupils blown so wide, the blue of Steve’s eyes is just a thin ring around pools of black, thick eyebrows furrowed in intense concentration, and red, parted lips. Steve is demonstrably on board.

Gently, keeping his eyes locked on that face, Bucky pulls back Steve’s foreskin so he can wrap his lips around the head of his cock, sucking lightly and tonguing at the spot just below the crown. The one that used to make Steve whimper.

Steve groans, carding his fingers back into Bucky’s hair. His eyes, in turn, don’t leave Bucky’s mouth as he pushes further forward, takes more of Steve into his mouth.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Steve hisses when his cock hits the back of Bucky’s throat and Bucky just keeps going. He hasn’t sucked a dick in a while, but Bucky regularly deepthroats a panoply of dildos these days. And Steve is thick, this Bucky remembers. Yet another way in which Steve feels like home to Bucky. He stretches Bucky’s lips, fills up his mouth, his throat, until he feels whole again at last.

Once his nose is nestled in the crop of short, dark blonde curls at the base of Steve’s perfect cock, Bucky hums. Happy.

The vibration of his hum seems to do something to Steve, though, and all at once, he’s rocking into Bucky’s mouth, very nearly choking him.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Steve bites out again, “I’m so sorry, pal—”

But Bucky’s already shaking his head as much as he can right now with a long, thick, gorgeous cock filling his throat. He grabs Steve’s hips in both hands and pulls, trying like hell to convey _how much he wants this_ to Steve.

Thankfully, Steve’s always been able to read Bucky like a book. He gets the message pretty much immediately.

Bucky moans around Steve’s dick when the hand in his hair tightens into a fist, holding him in place. _Yes, fuck, please_ , he thinks as Steve slowly pulls his hips back, dick sliding through Bucky’s lips like it was made for this.

It was. It was, Steve was made to be inside Bucky, this is what _both_ of them are meant for.

Steve holds Bucky’s head, and fucks into his throat, and Bucky _needs_ it, _needs_ this, but he needs _more_.

He lets out a little begging whine through his nose, hoping Steve will read his mind.

And of course he does, because Steve is perfect in every way that Bucky cares about.

“Okay, Buck,” Steve breathes raggedly. “I know, I remember. I’ll give you what you need.”

And he does.

Steve’s other hand fists in Bucky’s hair, too, just like at the club. And his next thrust is faster. Harder.

_Better_.

Bucky opens his throat, and closes his eyes. And as Steve begins to _really_ fuck his mouth, he finally lets go.

The slide of Steve’s cock down Bucky’s throat, across his tongue, and the taste of this man who he loves so fucking much — a taste and a man he’s been missing for nearly half his life — is the only thing Bucky knows. He wants to memorize this feeling. To know it by heart. He wants to be able to come back to it, when this night is over, and Steve is, once again, not his. In silence, inside his own mind, he _needs_ to be able to remember this.

But Steve pulls back before Bucky is ready, slips out of his mouth, and Bucky makes a noise like a shattered sob before he can stop himself.

Steve is pulling him up by his harness, though, back onto his feet, and slamming their lips together again as he backs Bucky up toward his bed.

“I want you naked,” Steve purrs, brushing their noses together. “ _Now_.”

Bucky’s not about to complain about that, and starts unbuckling his harness immediately while Steve rucks up his shirt, and then goes for his fly.

“We should put that back on you later,” Steve mutters, mouthing along Bucky’s jaw, as Bucky undoes the buckle at the back of his neck.

As soon as his neck is free, Steve rips Bucky’s shirt and harness off over his head together, and tosses them over his shoulder. He shoves him down onto the bed on his back, and yanks his skin-tight jeans down his hips and off of his legs, taking his shoes and socks, too, with frankly impressive grace.

And since Bucky was also going commando — as no kind of underwear looks good under those jeans — he’s now completely naked in Steve Rogers’ bed.

Steve stands back for a moment, raking his eyes over Bucky’s body.

“God, Buck,” he sighs appreciatively. “Look at you.”

Bucky can’t speak. He can’t bear the weight of Steve’s eyes on him like this. “Steve,” he rasps, reaching out for him.

A slow smile breaks across Steve’s face. Bright as the sunrise.

He starts shedding his own clothes as quickly as he did Bucky’s. Bucky’s eyes are glued to him, and the skin — and ridiculous musculature — he’s uncovering, as he scoots up the bed until his head hits the pillows.

Steve toes out of his shoes and socks, and peels off his skinny jeans. Then, he pounces.

Bucky gasps as Steve licks and bites his way up his body. He’s saying Steve’s name again, he realizes. Over and over.

“ _God,_ Bucky,” Steve breathes again, and runs his tongue up Bucky’s throat, all the way to the dimple on his chin. “You’re so _fucking_ hot, pal.” Bucky clings to Steve’s broad shoulders as Steve settles between his legs, nips at Steve’s jawline and kisses the marks he makes, desperate, hungry. “I don’t see you at all for five months—” Steve’s hips rock into Bucky’s, rubbing their erections together, and making Bucky whine, “—and you come here, and you wear _that? Fuuuck._ ”

“Stevie,” Bucky moans, hooking his ankles around Steve’s gorgeous thighs, trying to bring him closer still. He drags his fingertips through Steve’s new beard, and sobs, “Baby, _please_.”

Bucky really has no control over himself at all anymore. Didn’t mean to call Steve ‘baby,’ didn’t mean to show his hand like that. Steve kisses him, and he tries to let that silence him, but even with Steve’s tongue brushing the roof of his mouth, Bucky still makes noise. High pitched whines and rough groans, gasps and hisses. He can’t be quiet, not like this.

“Buck,” Steve breathes, hands running over Bucky’s sides, down his hips, over his thighs, anywhere he can touch. “Bucky—what d’you want, huh? What d’you want, pal? I’ll give you anything.”

And _that_ —

That’s dangerous.

He _should_ just say he wants to get fucked. Leave anything personal out of this, make it about the here, and the now, and not the person whose weight is pressing him into a mattress that smells more comforting and familiar to Bucky than his own bed ever has. Instead, what Bucky blurts out is more honest and truthful than the man above him could ever know.

“ _Steve._ ”

Nosing along his jawline, Steve’s lips, pressed to Bucky’s throat, curve into a smile. He shifts, just a little. Just enough to slot his arm between them, reach down, and gather both of them in hand.

Bucky keens when Steve starts to stroke them together, but this isn’t enough, it’s not what he _wants_ , it’s not—

“Buck, what is it?” Steve whispers, and gently kisses his face. “Tell me, pal, please.”

Bucky realizes that Steve’s stopped. That his hand is no longer gripping either of their cocks. That he stopped because Bucky squirmed underneath him, tried to push him away.

“Steve,” Bucky gasps. He can’t think. He can’t _breathe._

“Shh,” Steve shushes gently. Another kiss pressed to Bucky’s cheek. Hairy, and tickling. “Tell me what you need, honey, you can have it.”

Bucky really does sob at that. Tears fill his eyes. If only Steve really meant that, he thinks wildly. If only Steve knew how _much_ Bucky needs.

A tear tracks down his temple, and Steve kisses its trail.

And that shakes words from Bucky’s mouth.

“In me, Stevie, please, I’ve missed you _so much!_ ” he burbles, uncontained.

_Fuck._ Steve has to know that Bucky isn’t just talking about the last five months. If he’s listening, he _has_ to hear the truth in it: that Bucky’s body has been missing Steve’s body for _twelve entire years_. That Steve fucked him for a year when they were still kids, and Bucky has been hurting—physically _hurting_ for it, every single day since he stopped.

But maybe he doesn’t notice. Maybe he doesn’t _care_. Except that Steve _absolutely_ would care, he would stop this and apologize for making Bucky feel that way if he knew how much this one night stand means to him, so he _can’t_ have noticed.

Because suddenly, Steve is reaching for his nightstand, digging through the drawer there, until he returns to Bucky with a wrapped condom and a bottle of lube.

_God._

The way that Steve opens and stretches Bucky so he can fuck him feels like listening to a song Bucky hasn’t heard in years. He used to know the words exactly. He thought, maybe, in all that time, he’d forgotten, but no. The music plays, and he remembers each and every word the moment it’s about to be sung.

It’s been so _fucking_ long, but Steve seems to remember every note that makes Bucky’s body sing. Twelve goddamn years, and this man can still take him apart more expertly and efficiently than anyone else ever has.

Including himself, Bucky realizes now. Steve literally knows Bucky’s body better than he knows _himself_.

Steve’s fingers slip out of Bucky, leaving him empty and bereft, and he almost wants to cry from it. But his golden god is moving quickly, ripping open the wrapper on the condom, and rolling it on with urgency. Bucky only realizes he’s whimpering when Steve soothes him by gently shushing again, stroking one warm hand along Bucky’s inner thigh.

“I’m here,” he murmurs kindly, kneeling up and pulling Bucky’s hips toward him. He lines up with Bucky’s stretched hole, leans over him. “I’m right here.”

Steve’s lips meet Bucky’s just as he starts to push inside. Bucky is breaking, his back arching as Steve finally, finally, _finally_ fills him.

Bucky hasn’t even allowed himself to acknowledge _how much_ he’s been aching for this. He thought he knew, but now that Steve is inside him again, he realizes he had no idea. How he’s going to survive this, Bucky genuinely doesn’t know.

And now Steve’s hips are moving, and he’s actually _fucking_ Bucky, finding his spot again and nailing it over and over. His weight keeps Bucky pinned as Steve kisses him, bites down on his neck. It’s overwhelming, and Bucky feels so _fucking_ needy. He’s flying, and he’s drowning, all at once, but _god_ , this is _everything_.

“Steve,” Bucky gasps, feeling the warmth in his belly roll through him. “ _Stevie_ —”

“You gonna come for me?” Steve purrs. “Come on, Buck, I wanna feel you.”

That’s all Bucky needs for his orgasm to wash over him, raising goosebumps all over his body as he trembles, and comes with Steve’s name on his tongue.

Steve isn’t far behind. He bites down on Bucky’s shoulder, fucks him through his orgasm, and then stills. If he concentrates, Bucky can feel the way Steve twitches inside of him as he spills.

And then, just like that, it’s over.

Steve slumps there for a moment, trapping Bucky under his weight. Not that Bucky wants to move. Not that he has any desire to leave.

But Steve is already starting to soften. He pulls out, leaving Bucky feeling empty again, and somehow cold.

The soft, gentle kiss Steve gives him then surprises Bucky, but he’s grateful for it. Grateful for as many moments with Steve like this that he’s allowed.

Steve bumps their noses together when he pulls away, just slightly, and whispers, “Let’s clean up and go to sleep, okay?”

Bucky nods. He knows he shouldn’t stay here like this. He knows it’s a fantasy, and that in the morning, this’ll all be over. But he can’t bring himself to end it first.

Steve pulls a pack of wipes out of his nightstand drawer, uses them to wipe the cum off of Bucky’s chest and stomach, and to clean up the lube between his legs. Bucky feels exposed like this, but he can’t even bring himself to mind, because it’s _Steve_. He’s here, in Steve’s bed, naked and fucked, and that’s all he’s wanted for _so long_.

Once they’re clean, Steve starts pulling the covers up over them both.

“I should probably brush my teeth—” Bucky starts uncertainly, but Steve shakes his head and makes a sleepy noise of protest. He’d almost forgotten how sleep-heavy Steve gets after an orgasm.

( _No, he hadn’t._ )

“Leave it ‘til morning,” Steve mumbles, turning over on his side and gently manhandling Bucky over onto his, too. He wraps a huge arm around Bucky’s waist, chest pressed to Bucky’s back, Bucky’s ass flush with Steve’s pelvis, their thighs, knees, and ankles all tangled together.

They’re touching everywhere. Top to toe. And Steve is so warm, and so soft, and smells and feels like everything Bucky has so desperately needed for _so fucking long_ , that he can’t help it. As Steve presses a soft kiss to the back of his neck, Bucky feels the pull of sleep take him.

And he just lets go.

❄︎

When Bucky’s eyes flutter open again, the warm body has gone from his, and the digital clock on Steve’s dresser reads 4:41AM in red, blaring LEDs.

Steve has rolled over onto his other side in his sleep, his back to Bucky now. And that feels…symbolic, somehow. All at once, Bucky feels out of place. Unwanted. He shouldn’t be here.

He _can’t_ be here.

He’s supposed to leave after breakfast. Sam and Nat are planning on seeing him again before he goes. But he _has_ to go. He can’t stay, can’t face Steve after what they did last night. Can’t look him in the eye, with his still-kiss-swollen lips, and pretend like they can just go back to being friends again.

This happened last time, too. Bucky needed three fucking years to get over it last time. He’s such a goddamn fucking _idiot_ , he should have known this would happen. He _did_ know this would happen, and he did it anyway. Fuck. _Fuck!_

Bucky slips out of bed, and pads around the room, gathering his clothes and shoes from last night. He shoves it all in his suitcase, and quickly dresses in the clean clothes he brought to drive home in. His mouth definitely feels like something died in it, but he can’t risk waking Steve up, so he ignores that. He makes sure he has everything that belongs to him, including his almost-dead phone, zips up his overnight bag, and gets the hell out of this apartment.

Steve doesn’t wake up as Bucky leaves, not even when he pauses at the door, and gazes back at that peaceful, sleeping face, as his heart shatters to pieces in his chest. He wants to go back. Climb back in bed. Kiss that mouth, that hair. Tell Steve he loves him, _beg_ him to try. See if they can make it _work_ this time.

He doesn’t.

He leaves.

Bucky locks the door behind him with the key he still has, then unhooks it from his keychain, and shoves it under the door. It feels wrong to have it now. Now that he’s detonated another bomb in his and Steve’s friendship. He just prays they can make it through this time. Without the three years lost, _please, God_.

He hooks his phone up to the charge cable inside his car, and drives out of the garage like he’s afraid Steve or Sam will come run after him.

He doesn’t even stop for food on his way out of the city. He’s starving, and hungover as hell, but he _needs to get out_.

He can’t be here anymore.

❄︎

At just after 6am, about an hour into Bucky’s drive home, Sam calls.

Bucky almost doesn’t answer. But he did leave without a word. Sam might be worried, and Sam didn’t do anything wrong. Sam did everything he could. Bucky’s just a fucking dumbass, and willfully didn’t listen.

“Hey,” he greets when he answers the call through his car’s bluetooth system. He already sounds weighed down with shame, even to his own ears.

“Hey, man,” Sam replies, and yup, there’s that kind concern in his voice, the one that both stings and soothes. “You okay? I woke up with a hell of a hangover, and…I kinda noticed your stuff is all gone, so I checked downstairs.”

And saw that Bucky’s car was gone, too. Smart.

“Yeah,” Bucky lies. Obviously. He’s _obviously_ lying, because his voice hitches as he says it, like he’s about to start crying. He might be about to start crying. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just wanted to beat traffic.”

“Bucky,” Sam says. It sounds like, _Come on,_ but it’s not unkind.

Bucky sighs roughly. “I slept with him,” he admits immediately. He doesn’t have it in him _not_ to confess.

“Yeah,” Sam tells him, almost reluctantly, “I know.”

Bucky sniffs, but just waits for Sam to elaborate.

Which he does.

“I wasn’t actually asleep yet when you guys came in,” he says carefully. “And I, uh…I heard some stuff that didn’t sound like you guys were going right to sleep, either.”

“ _Jesus fuck_ ,” Bucky moans, humiliated. So now, not only has he ripped open a raw nerve in his own heart, _and_ possibly nuked his relationship with his best friend _again_ , but he also subjected one of his other best friends to listening to him moan and grunt and beg for it. _Great_.

“You’re fine,” Sam says firmly, almost like he can hear Bucky’s thoughts. “I didn’t hear anything terribly specific, just some telltale sounds. Also, Steve didn’t sleep on the couch.”

“You were right,” Bucky says miserably. His voice is thick, his throat closing up, and his eyes are pricking with unshed tears. “You were right, I fucked up. I’m in love with him, I fucked up.”

“That why you left?” Sam asks. “You didn’t fuck up, Bucky, you and Steve made a decision.”

“A fucked up decision,” Bucky argues. “Yeah, that’s why I left.” And now he starts to actually cry. “I couldn’t be there anymore, Sam, I just _couldn’t_ , I needed to—”

He cuts off with a gasp.

“Hey,” Sam says. “Pull over, Bucky. Last thing I need is your dumb ass getting to a car accident over a dumbass like Steve.”

Bucky hiccups, but does as Sam says.

“I’m pulled over,” he says after he’s stopped the car and taken the keys out of the ignition.

“Good,” Sam encourages. “Bucky, I know you, and I know you’re probably deep in your shame feelings right now, so I’m gonna need you to climb outta those as soon as you can, okay? You didn’t do anything wrong. You wanted it, and so did he. It’s not gonna ruin your friendship. I know it won’t. Steve cares about you more than anything, man, he’d do _anything_ for you. I know you two might not want the same things right now, but _that’s_ still true. I don’t think that’ll ever not be true. Not for him. Okay?”

Bucky sniffs again. He swipes at the tears on his face. “Okay,” he mutters. He doesn’t argue.

“I mean it, Bucky,” Sam reiterates. “You don’t see him right after he’s been on the phone with you. Or when he’s had a long day, and all he needs is to talk to you. Dude, the amount of times I’ve had to literally hand him his phone and tell him to call you, just because he was moping around and being unbearable with the puppy eyes, you can’t even begin to know. He talks to you, and it’s like something inside him lights up. If you go too long without calling him, he gets all sulky and internal, and no one can get him out of that but you. And I bet you don’t even know you do it, because the _second_ he hears your voice, it’s gone. He’s him again. I don’t know what that means, I just know that you’re the only one who does that for him. He’s not gonna let you go.”

Oh. Oh, wow. Bucky’s heart aches, but in a different way now. To think that any of that is true — and Sam’s not a liar, and he’s never been cruel, he _wouldn’t_ lie about this, so it has to be true — to think Bucky is _any_ of that for Steve….

“You still there?” Sam asks. Bucky is still breathing in hitched, hiccuping breaths, so Sam definitely knows the answer to that, but still he responds.

“Yeah.”

“You any less panicky?”

“Maybe,” Bucky admits with a wet snort.

“Okay,” Sam says, and sounds pleased. “Think you’re okay to drive now?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Sam.”

“No need for that, man, just get home safe, okay? And let me or Steve know when you do?”

“I will,” Bucky promises. “Sorry I skipped out on breakfast.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Sam says dismissively. “We’ll miss you, but I get it. Try to get some more sleep when you get home. And drink lots of water, I can’t _imagine_ the kinda hangover you must be having right now.”

Bucky laughs, albeit still wetly, and he and Sam say their goodbyes.

Maybe Bucky can believe Sam. Maybe everything’s gonna be okay. Eventually.

Maybe not Bucky’s heart. Not yet. But maybe in some distant future, even that will heal.

❄︎ ❄︎

Maybe.

❄︎ ❄︎

The first person who greets Bucky when he gets home, around 7:30, is Alpine. She trots up to him the moment he’s opening the door, and doesn’t even let him put his bag down before she’s stretching up his leg, begging him to pick her up.

“Hey, girlie,” Bucky greets her softly, scooping her up to hold her like a baby, the way she likes. “You miss me?”

“Bucky?” Winnie’s voice comes from the kitchen. A second later, her head pokes around the corner. The second person to greet him, then. “I didn’t know you were coming home so early.”

Bucky freezes. He’d kinda thought everyone would still be asleep. He hadn’t actually figured out what to tell his family about why he drove home so early in the morning. And here’s his mom, with her soft brown curls that she passed on to him, and her soft brown eyes, even softer with loving concern, and Bucky is too emotional, and too heartbroken, and too hungover to deal with all of that right now.

He bursts into tears on the spot.

Winnie fusses over him like he’s her little boy again — because, as she keeps rightly insisting, he still very much is — and Bucky feels almost like he’s seven years old with a skinned knee as she gets him planted on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, with a steaming cup of coffee between his hands, Alpine curled up on his lap.

And then, she asks him what happened.

And he tells her.

“I slept with Steve,” he says through even more hiccuping tears. “I thought it would be okay, but I love him so much, Ma, and he doesn’t love me like that.”

“How do you know he doesn’t?” Winnie asks, one arm around Bucky’s shoulders, her hand stroking through his curly hair, just like hers.

Bucky leans his head back against his ma’s shoulder, and turns his face into her neck. “Because he doesn’t,” he says, almost petulantly, except this is something Bucky knows to be true. “He didn’t when we were kids, and he doesn’t now.”

Winnie hums thoughtfully, but doesn’t say anything for a few moments. When she does, she speaks slowly. Carefully.

“Sweetie,” she begins, gentle, “I know that when you told him you loved him in college, he didn’t respond the way you wanted him to. But feelings can change. And if I’m right, I don’t think he ever actually told you he _didn’t_ love you.”

“Ma, he had a longterm girlfriend,” Bucky says. “Who he _proposed to_ a few years later, and would have _married_ if she’d let him. Please, Mama, I don’t need any false hope.”

“I’m not trying to give you false hope, baby,” Winnie tells him. “I just know that that boy has always looked at you like the sun personally shines outta your ass—”

“ _Ma!_ ”

“— _and_ ,” Winnie continues pointedly, “that over the last few years, that look he gives you has gotten dopier and dopier. If he wanted to sleep with you, don’t you think that says something?”

Bucky groans. “Ma—we used to sleep together when we were teenagers, too,” he confesses to her for the first time. “He didn’t love me then, either.”

“I know you did,” Winnie tells him bluntly, causing Bucky to pop up in shock, almost spilling his coffee, and unfortunately spooking Alpine into jumping off of his lap.

“What, you think I don’t have eyes?” Winnie asks him wryly. “I’m your mother, not an idiot. Sarah and I kept having to intentionally listen at doors before even knocking, so we wouldn’t walk in on you two mid-coitus.”

“ _MA!_ ” Bucky cries, dropping his burning, red face into his hands, now that he’s deposited his mug onto the coffee table to prevent dumping it all in his now-vacant lap from humiliation.

“Sweetie, teenagers have sex,” Winnie says matter-of-factly. “You and Steve were _not_ subtle about it, as much as you believed you were. You’re old enough now to look back and realize that ‘We’re gonna go to the mall and flirt with girls’ was an extremely weak cover story, considering you, my love, have been as gay as the day is long for your entire wonderful life, and Steve was always looking at you like he was three seconds away from eating you alive.”

“I don’t know what’s more upsetting to hear,” Bucky complains, “that you and Aunt Sarah knew Steve and I were fucking the entire time — and were apparently _fine_ with it — or that you, my own _mother_ , knew I was gay my _whole life_ , and didn’t _tell_ me?!”

Winnie laughs, and draws Bucky back into her arms, letting him nestle his face back in her neck.

“I have never had any desire to be in the business of telling you who you are,” she tells him firmly, “unless it’s something I think you _need_ to hear. That was something you needed to discover yourself, and I was happy to wait for you to tell me when you were ready. _This_ , however,” she continues, tilting Bucky’s head up so he’ll look in her eyes, “you need to hear: You, my sweet boy, are a dumbass.”

“Ma!” Bucky whines yet again, but Winnie shakes her head, silencing him.

“You have been in love with that boy for, what? Fifteen years?”

“Something like that,” Bucky admits begrudgingly. “I honestly don’t know exactly when I fell for him.”

“So half your life at _least_ ,” Winnie concludes. “You told him once, twelve years ago, and he wasn’t in a position to reciprocate. You’re _still_ in love with him, and he doesn’t even know.”

Bucky’s eyebrows pull together, and his lower lip starts to jut out in a clear pout. He doesn’t like this conversation, he’s decided. He wants a different, more coddling one.

“Sweet boy,” Winnie says again, going back to carding her fingers through Bucky’s hair, “you need to tell that man how you feel.”

“No,” Bucky says right away. “Ma, I almost lost him last time, I can’t go through that again.”

Winnie hums again. “All right,” she concedes, “then you need to make your peace with that. Those are your only options, I’m afraid, Bucky Bear. Whether or not you ever sleep with him again, it has to be one or the other, or you’re just going to be miserable in the pine forest you’ve made for yourself for another fifteen years.”

She says it all gently, in the loving way only your mom can really pull off, but Bucky closes his eyes against the brutal truth of it.

“I love him,” he whispers, mostly because he doesn’t get to say it out loud, not ever, and he’s tired of keeping it inside. “I’m so in love with him, Ma. There’s never been anyone else, not like him.”

“I know,” Winnie tells him. She sounds almost sad. “I know there hasn’t. And there won’t ever be if you don’t let him go. Tell him or don’t tell him, but don’t stay where you are when all it does is break your heart.”

❄︎ ❄︎

At 10:13am, Steve texts Bucky.

_Get home okay?_

Bucky stares at it for a while before answering. He’d been napping, woke up because his phone vibrated next to his head, and he feels groggy and confused.

_yeah. home safe now._

It doesn’t feel adequate. He feels like he should apologize for leaving without a word, after they slept together for the first time since Steve became a legal adult. But Steve hasn’t said anything about it, even to ask him why, and Bucky doesn’t know how to acknowledge what they did together last night if Steve isn’t going to.

Maybe it’s better that they don’t. If pretending like it just didn’t happen smoothes them through the awkward transition back into being just friends, maybe they should just never speak of it again.

Steve’s reply comes through quickly.

_Glad to hear. Get some rest, party boy._ 🥂💖

Bucky sends back the thumbs up emoji, rolls over, and goes back to sleep.

❄︎ ❄︎

At 2:37pm, Bucky is awake again, and finally pulls his work phone out to check his messages.

The photo set from last week is still selling pretty well, considering it’s no longer Hanukkah. That preview shot ended up being _incredibly_ popular, though, so that makes sense. He’s got a fair amount of DMs. He’ll pick and choose a few to respond to later, but right now, Bucky’s eyes zero in on one single message.

From Steve.

_Thinking about you._

That’s all it says. But the time it was sent is what has Bucky reeling.

It’s from the few minutes that he was changing last night, getting ready to go out, while Steve was on his phone on the sofa.

So, Steve _was_ just horny, after all. He DMed Winter, and when Winter didn’t reply, he hit on Bucky. Makes sense. It’s what Bucky expected.

It really shouldn’t feel like such a knife to the gut.

But it does.

And Bucky must be some kind of fucking masochist, because he’s _jealous_ of his fucking _alter ego_ — when it’s his body Steve is attracted to, his words Steve responds to, _his_ body Steve fucking _came inside_ only a few hours ago — and instead of putting it all away, he DMs Steve back.

_still thinking bout me?_

His mother was right. Bucky is a dumbass.

Steve responds only a few minutes later.

_Pretty much always thinking bout you._

It simultaneously makes Bucky’s heart skip _and_ ache. _Was Steve thinking about Winter when he was fucking me?_

God, Bucky is stupid. Winter _is_ him. But Steve doesn’t know that, Steve would have thought he was thinking of someone else.

But then Steve messages Winter again.

_You take a night off?_

_sometimes i like to have a little me time_ 😉

It’s suggestive — just like Winter always is, Bucky tries to justify it to himself.

“Stop it, Barnes,” he mutters to himself out loud. “You’re playing with fire.”

But then Steve messages him again.

_Me time is good. Did you think about me at all?_

And Bucky is so fucked.

_would you believe me if i said i did?_

Suddenly, this feels like a way to get it all off his chest without being caught. Suddenly, Bucky wants to tell Steve everything.

Well…not everything. Winter can’t say he’s in love with Steve. But everything else. He can tell Steve how much he _wants_ him, and he doesn’t have to worry about ruining anything.

_I would. I know it’s your job to flirt, but I think you’d be telling the truth about that._

_someone thinks a lot of himself_

_Nope. Someone thinks you’re really special. And someone has a sneaking suspicion the feeling is mutual._

_what makes you think that?_

_Call it intuition._

Bucky bites his lip.

_you have any fun while i was gone?_

_I did._

_Did you?_

This feels a little too real. If Steve knew he was talking to Bucky, this would be a question about if Bucky enjoyed the sex they had. But Steve is talking to Winter.

Still, Bucky’s the one who answers.

_i did_

It’s a truth he wishes he could tell Steve for real. It may have been a disaster, and Bucky may have run from it in the middle of the night, but it was a disaster that felt so _achingly_ good. The bruises on his thighs, neck, and shoulders, that he didn’t even register until he took a shower a little while ago, are like sweet little post-its on his body, reminders that something perfect was his for a little while.

_I’m happy to hear that._

_I’m still thinking about you._

_well you are in fact talking to me at this very moment, stunner_

_You know what I mean._ 😘

_And what makes you think I’m a stunner?_

_i know you are. i can tell._

Steve doesn’t have any pictures of himself on his personal account. He gets too angry and near-violently political on there to let himself link it to his public persona. That doesn’t matter. Bucky’d be able to tell, even if he didn’t already know Steve. He truly believes he would. That’s how bright Steve shines.

_if you feel like proving me right, though, i wouldn’t say no to a picture_ 😉

That’s _definitely_ a bad idea, and Bucky knows that. But…he loves Steve. He misses Steve so fucking much, even after seeing him just hours ago. He feels like he needs to see him, even just in a selfie on a phone screen.

And it’s not like Bucky can ask Steve for one as himself without it being weird, so.

Winter does it for him.

And Steve—obliges.

Oh _boy_ , does he.

It’s a selfie, clearly taken just now. Steve’s lying in bed. The same bed he fucked Bucky into less than twelve hours ago. He’s shirtless ( _naked?_ ), and holding his phone above himself. He’s only visible from the chest up, but the smattering of chest hair, darker than the hair on his head, is front and center, dusted over his impressively beautiful tits. His hair in a little unkempt in a sexy way, splayed over his pillow, and his beard looks mussed, like he’s been scratching at it, or maybe he was asleep recently. His eyes are half-lidded and smoldering, but the blue of them is still clearly visible. One corner of his mouth is pulled into a little smirk.

Holy fucking shit, he’s hot.

Bucky bites his lip again, feeling hot all over. Before he can think it through, he opens the camera app on his own phone, strips off his shirt, and snaps a picture of himself. He’s sitting on his heels on his bed, angles the camera to show off his defined abs and chest, bitten mouth visible. He sends it before his brain has a chance to convince him not to, even though there’s a siren blaring somewhere in the back of his mind. _WEEOO WEEOO WEEOO! DUMBASS DECISION ALERT!_

_knew i was right_

He sends the message immediately after his selfie. Steve replies almost instantaneously.

_You’re hotter than I am._

_no way. that face? fuck_

_Wish I could see yours._

Bucky’s breath stutters. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck, he _knew_ this was stupid—

But then another message comes through, right after the last one, stopping his panic just as it starts.

_I know I can’t, I’m not asking. Just wish I could._

_you wanna see anything else?_

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

_Anything you’re willing to show me, sweetheart._

_Stupid_.

Bucky switches over to his camera app again, and lies down in bed, shoving his flannel pajama pants and boxers down his thighs, then kicking them off altogether. He strokes his half-hard cock a few times until he’s fully erect — not difficult, thinking about Steve possibly doing the same. Takes a picture of his hand thumbing at his slit, thighs and treasure trail included, and sends it.

He _doesn’t_ do this. Winter doesn’t, anyway. People don’t get free pictures, _no one_ does.

Steve does. Steve always will, however long he wants them. This, Bucky knows.

_Fucking hell. You’re so fucking beautiful._

_Knew I was special._

_you really are. don’t even know._

_you gonna show me yours?_

Two minutes. That’s all it takes. And then Bucky is graced with an eyeful of Steve’s gorgeous hand around his gorgeous cock. It’s not quite as artful as Bucky’s dick pic was, but it’s still perfect.

Bucky starts stroking himself with intention. He’s gonna get off on this. On anything Steve will give him. 

_tell me what you want to do to me, steve_

_tell me what you wanna do with that pretty cock of yours_

_You touching yourself for me?_

_you know damn well i am_

_Fuck. Good._

_First, I wanna kiss that mouth of yours. Gorgeous fucking mouth, sweetheart. Then, I wanna suck you off._

_jesus_

_you don’t want me to do that for you?_

_since you like my mouth?_

_I don’t just like your mouth, Winter. I love your mouth._

_But no, I wanna get mine on you first._

_Wanna taste that sweet cock of yours._

Buck groans. Sends another picture of his dick, practically weeping now with want for everything Steve’s offering.

_Oh, gorgeous. That all for me?_

_yes, steve_

_all for you_

That’s way more true than Bucky would like to admit. Winter might be talking about his body’s reaction to Steve’s words, but Bucky means all of him. Everything. All for Steve.

Steve sends another picture, too. Fist around an angry red cock, abs, chest, even his mouth, lips parted.

_god, baby, look at you_

_I’d rather look at you._

_Wanna sit back and watch you finger yourself open for me. Not even touch you, let you get yourself all worked up until you’re begging for my cock._

_please_

_fuck_

Bucky moans out loud in his room. Has to bite down on his fist to keep from getting loud enough to be heard.

_Would you like that, honey? You want me to tell you what to do for me? Watch you obey me?_

_god yes, steve fuck_

_want that so bad_

_Then I’ll turn you over, hold you down by the back of your neck and fuck you until you can’t remember your own name._

_How’s that sound?_

_jesus christ steve yes_

_i’m close_

_fuck_

He is. He’s so close, he’s gonna come so soon, but he wants Steve to tell him to. Doesn’t know how to ask for it, but _wants_ it bad.

_Ask me for it._

_Fuck_ , Steve really is perfect, Jesus goddamn Christ.

_please steve can i come?_

_Such a good boy._

_Yeah, honey, come for me._

And Bucky does. Holy fuck, does he.

It takes a little bit of time to come back down to earth. Bucky feels like he just got rocketed into space. He breathes, and blinks, and then opens his camera app.

The picture he sends Steve includes as much of his body as he can possibly fit in the shot. Upper thighs, all the way to his mouth, lips parted softly, cum streaked over his torso.

Relaxed. Satisfied.

All for Steve.

A picture of Steve follows, almost exactly like Bucky’s — cum splatters over his stomach and chest included — but his whole face is in it. He’s smiling softly, and the fucked out look in his eyes is so beautiful, Bucky wants to cry.

He may, in fact, cry about it, actually. Later. After the high of his orgasm wears off.

_thank you_

He doesn’t know what else to say. He wants to say _I love you_ , but he can’t. He’s never actually been allowed that, not the way he wants.

And he _wants_.

_Anytime, sweetheart._

_Thank you. That was incredible._

_I mean it. Anytime._

_i’ll keep that in mind_ ❤️

The heart is an extra stupid touch, but Bucky’s too raw. Can’t help it.

_and you’re right. it was incredible_

He knows this was bad. He’s already feeling the shame of it sink in as he rolls over onto his side, reaching for tissues to clean himself up. Steve doesn’t know it’s Bucky he’s sexting, this may have just been an _incredibly_ gross thing he did to his best friend. He should never, ever do this, ever again.

But.

Steve wants him. Even if it’s just Winter, he wants Bucky’s _body_ , at least.

Bucky doesn’t know that he’ll be able to resist that.

He never really can.

❄︎ ❄︎

A week passes.

As themselves, Steve and Bucky never mention the night they spent naked together, touching and tasting and knowing each other like they used to. It really is like it never happened. Steve continues to text Bucky and talk with him over the phone like normal, and he never acts even a little bit like he wants Bucky again, or at all. Never even alludes to that night in his bed.

Bucky understands what this means. He was right, and Steve only wanted companionship for that night. He’s obviously attracted to Bucky, but he doesn’t want him romantically. Or even regularly. It was a one-time thing, and that’s that.

Steve talks about the work he’s doing, and he sounds so excited and enthusiastic about it, Bucky can’t help but feel thrilled for him, and so, so proud. The fact that it means he doesn’t get to see his best friend (and the love of his entire fucking life) over Christmas shouldn’t matter.

It does, though.

As Winter, they continue flirting. They sext again, and then again, and then a fourth time. Bucky hates himself, but he doesn’t stop.

It’s…not ideal.

So, Bucky accepts his lot in life — or, he tries to, anyway — and settles in for a miserable Christmas.

❄︎ ❄︎

On the morning of Christmas Eve, Bucky wakes up to the smell of gingerbread and coffee. Despite his Christmas Scrooge-iness this year, that is, in fact, the exact combination of aromas he requires to stumble out of bed, and down the stairs, directly into the kitchen, where his dad is making gingerbread French toast in his pajamas.

Bucky shuffles wordlessly over to the coffee machine, hair all a bird’s nest, he’s sure, and accepts the cheek kiss his dad gives him in silent greeting.

This is one thing Bucky really appreciates about his father: he truly understands that speech must wait until after coffee has been at least partially consumed.

Bucky’d asked him, after that cool chat with his mom when she’d called him a dumbass to his face, if he’d also known all the stuff his ma knew all along.

“You mean about you being extremely homosexual?” George had asked, an annoying and playful glint in his eye. “Or about how you and Steve used to hook up?”

“Okay, first of all,” Bucky said vehemently, “don’t _ever_ say _any_ of that again, _father_. And secondly,” he cried, and then immediately dropped his voice to a grumble, “all of that, yeah.”

Bucky’s dad’s a dork, but he loves him. And…like father, like son, really.

Once about a third of the coffee is inside Bucky’s bloodstream, he finally mumbles a good morning to his dad, who responds in kind with a little amused laugh.

“Merry Christmas Eve,” George tells him, flipping a piece of French toast.

Bucky snorts, and drinks more coffee.

He’s so happy to see his dad like this, honestly. Hanukkah may be Winnie’s wheelhouse, but Christmas is undoubtedly George’s. After his heart attack in July, and the subsequent months of weakness, fatigue, and frustration, Bucky could not be more thrilled, despite how miserable he might feel for this particular holiday, that his father is up, and cheerful, and making their traditional Christmas Eve breakfast.

As per tradition, the Barneses eat their gingerbread French toast in the living room, all in their pajamas. Becca and Bucky are on the floor around the coffee table, while Winnie and George sit together on the couch, plates on their laps. Tradition.

For the most part, Christmas Eve and Christmas are both pajama days in this household. They only actually get dressed in the evening, when they go on their Barnes Family Christmas Eve Walk, and to attend Midnight Mass back when they used to do that with some regularity.

Mass is not on the schedule this year, in part because George really shouldn’t be out that late after a full day of Christmas Eve-ing, and also because pretty much none of them feel up to it this year. It’s been a hell of a year, and no one in this family is particularly religious anyway. So this year, they agreed to respectfully fuck it, and stay home.

Which is why they’re all four still in their pajamas, surrounded by syrupy plates, lazily watching _Christmas In Connecticut_ , when the doorbell rings almost an hour later.

Bucky hauls himself up off the floor — where he’s been lying on his side, flicking a little jingly ball back and forth with Alpine — declaring that he’ll get it. They all know it’s Sarah. She usually gets here just a little after breakfast, and they’re not expecting anyone else today, so it’s gotta be her.

And it is. But when Bucky opens the door to greet his aunt with hugs and smiles, he stops short, mouth dropped open in shock.

Sarah’s not alone.

Standing just over her shoulder—

—is Steve.

“Hi, Bucky!” Sarah cries happily, already sweeping Bucky into a huge hug. Bucky stares, bug-eyed, at Steve, who’s just grinning back at him, shit-eating and irritatingly pleased with himself. “Merry Christmas, love!”

“Merry Christmas, Aunt Sarah,” Bucky returns, shaking himself out of his shock to kiss her on the cheek. “Come inside. Have you eaten? Dad made gingerbread French toast, there’s still some in the oven.”

“Oh, that sounds _delicious_ ,” Sarah gushes, accepting Bucky’s invitation and crossing the threshold, pulling off her gloves and shrugging out of her coat to hang it up.

While Sarah goes into the living room to greet the rest of the family, Bucky squints accusingly up at Steve’s grin.

“I was under the impression you couldn’t get away,” he says dryly, but lets Steve wrap him up in a bear hug anyway.

“I made time,” Steve mumbles simply into Bucky’s lion’s mane of hair, squeezing so hard, it’s becoming difficult to breathe.

Still, breathing or not, Bucky has absolutely no desire to budge from Steve’s hold. He’s genuinely _so happy and relieved_ that Steve is here. It’s hitting him so much harder than he could ever have expected. Steve is _here_. Steve is here for Christmas. Steve is here for Christmas, and hugging Bucky, like everything is okay. Like he’s just as thrilled to see Bucky as Bucky is to see him.

And fuck, he still smells like home.

“When did you get in?” Bucky asks, a little dopily, after Steve has finally released him, ushering him inside just as little white flakes of snow start falling gently from the sky.

“Late last night,” Steve answers, taking off his scarf, gloves, and coat, and hanging them all on one of the hooks by the door. He stomps his boots across the rug, and then bends to take those off, too. “Took my bike up to my mom’s at about midnight.”

“What the fuck, you took your _bike?_ ” Bucky demands, laughing incredulously. “How are you not frozen solid?”

Steve flashes him a disarming grin. “Maybe I am,” he challenges. “Wanna check for me?”

Bucky blinks because that…almost sounded flirtatious. Didn’t it? What’s happening?

But then Steve suddenly seizes Bucky around the waist, yanking him into another hug, and _shoves his extremely icy hands up Bucky’s pajama thermal._

Bucky squeals, and tries to squirm away, gasping at how _fucking_ _cold_ Steve’s hands are, considering they were in _gloves_ not a moment ago. But Steve’s bigger than him, taller and stronger, and his hold on Bucky is tight as he cackles at his own mischief.

“ _FUCK!_ ” Bucky bellows, throwing himself backward, hands scrambling against Steve’s strong arms. “What’d you fuckin’ _do_ , Stevie, double fist a snow bank?!”

“James Buchanan!” Winnie’s voice cries out from the living room. “ _Please_ remember your parents can _hear you!_ ”

Steve starts laughing so hard at that, he collapses against the wall and slides down to the floor, releasing Bucky at last.

Bucky glowers down at him. “See what you did?” he hisses under his breath. “You got me in _trouble_ with my _ma_ , you little punk!”

It takes Steve a minute to catch his breath enough to reply, and Bucky is forced to fight the smile that wants to take over his face at the sight of Steve happy and laughing like this like _absolute hell_.

There will be _no satisfaction_ for this troublemaker, not if Bucky has any say.

( _Which—does he? Does he_ really _have any control here?_ )

Finally Steve manages to get out a laughing, “Sorry, pal,” before dissolving into giggles again.

Bucky rolls his eyes, but he definitely loses the fight with his grin.

“I’m _really_ glad you’re here, Stevie,” he admits, a little too honestly.

But Steve looks up at him, with a smile on his face and laughter in his eyes, and nods. “Me too, Buck,” he agrees softly. “Merry Christmas.”

❄︎

With Steve here, even considering all of the terrible life choices Bucky has been making regarding him, it actually feels like Christmas. Bucky’s bad mood has _vanished_. He’ll deal with his mistakes later, he thinks. Today, it’s Christmas Eve, and the whole family is together, and he’s gonna enjoy it. He’s gonna be _happy_.

Steve lies down on the floor with Bucky after he and Sarah have eaten the rest of the French toast. They lie on their stomachs, side by side, and ruthlessly heckle _Home Alone_ quietly to each other, while Becca throws popcorn at them every time they make each other laugh too loudly. At some point, Alpine walks over and climbs onto Steve’s back, then curls up and falls asleep there, and Steve _definitely doesn’t_ cry about it (except he totally does, and Bucky absolutely laughs at him for it).

Lunch is another casual affair — a slow-cooker meal, eaten around the coffee table in the living room again — and then the parents all go upstairs to have a nap (Winnie and George in their room, and Sarah in the guest bedroom that’s been made up for her — and for Steve, now that he’s here), while Bucky, Becca, and Steve get locked in an incredibly heated game of _Ticket to Ride_. Bucky wins, having attained the longest train bonus to catapult him past both Steve and Becca in points, and then finds himself under siege, as both his sister and his best friend pelt him with every pillow and cushion in the room.

After Bucky digs himself out of the ensuing pillow mountain with as much dignity as he can muster, the three of them settle on the sofa to watch _The Muppet Christmas Carol_. Bucky is sandwiched in between his two favorite people, and it’s only when she doesn’t join in with singing “It Feels Like Christmas” that Bucky realizes Becca’s fallen asleep with her head in his lap. And maybe that encourages him to snuggle a little further into Steve’s side. And maybe Steve lifts his arm, and wraps it around Bucky’s shoulders.

There’s no one else here to see, if they do.

Except that after they finish with the Muppets, and move on to _Elf_ , Bucky falls asleep, too, nestled under Steve’s warm arm.

He only wakes up when Steve says his name gently, opening his eyes to find he’s now lying all the way down. And so is Steve. And Becca is gone. And Alpine is curled up on his feet. And Bucky is snuggled up to Steve’s side, his head resting on Steve’s chest.

And Steve’s fingers are stroking his hair.

Bucky sniffs, jolting awake. “Oh, sorry,” he grunts, but Steve’s arm keeps him weighted down, his hand keeps stroking his hair.

“It’s okay,” Steve says warmly, and Bucky looks up to a soft smile on Steve’s beautiful face.

_It’s A Wonderful Life_ is playing on the television now. And…it’s almost over.

“How long was I out?” Bucky asks.

Steve shrugs. “Couple hours,” he says casually. He’s _still_ stroking Bucky’s hair. Bucky might be about to start purring. “I fell asleep for a little bit, too. It was nice.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees, although his heart is stuttering in his chest. It _was_ nice. It was _too_ nice.

“I only woke you because your dad said dinner’s gonna be ready soon, and we have to get dressed,” Steve tells him apologetically. But still, he makes no move to get up, or to let Bucky up, either.

“Then…,” Bucky says slowly, finding himself melting into Steve’s touch, resting his head back down on his broad, pillowy chest, “we should probably get dressed.”

Steve hums, but doesn’t move.

They don’t get up for another fifteen minutes.

❄︎ ❄︎

Dinner is in the formal dining room the Barneses rarely use. It’s loud, joyous, and wonderful. There’s way too much food, and they all eat way too much. Early on, Steve’s knee bumps against Bucky’s, and then stays there the entire meal.

Bucky’s work phone is burning a hole in his pocket. He took it out when he went to get changed for dinner, morbidly curious to see if Steve messaged Winter at all while he’s been here. He hadn’t. So Bucky did an extremely sensible thing: he turned on notification alerts for the first time ever on this phone, and set them so that he’ll only get an alert if Steve messages him.

Bucky is doing _great_ , thanks for asking.

So far, nothing. But it’s not like Steve has had a lot of time to himself.

Still, the knee pressed against his knee feels like something Bucky isn’t ready to allow himself to hope for.

❄︎ ❄︎

After dinner comes the Barnes Family Christmas Eve Walk, as per the doctrine. All six of them bundle up, and head out into the snow, which is still softly falling around them.

It’s magic. Steve is here, and it’s Christmas Eve, and snow is falling onto Bucky’s eyelashes, and it’s _magic_.

The parents and Becca end up walking ahead of Steve and Bucky, for some reason. And halfway down the road, Steve reaches out and takes Bucky’s gloved hand in his own.

Bucky’s heart flutters. His stomach swoops. There’s something happening that he doesn’t fully understand.

Something magic.

Steve doesn’t let go of Bucky’s hand the entire walk. Not until they’re back inside, and only so they can both take off their gloves.

❄︎ ❄︎

The six of them gather around the living room again, beside the roaring fire. Although this time, Bucky ends up sitting with his ma on the loveseat, with Steve on the opposite armchair, Alpine in his lap. They’ve all got steaming mugs of mulled wine or hot chocolate (or, in Becca’s weirdass case, hot chocolate _mixed_ with mulled wine), and as they sip from their mugs, Sarah recites, from memory, Clement Clarke Moore’s, _A Visit from St. Nicholas_ , doing all of her famous character voices, with Bucky, Steve, and Becca all chiming in for their favorite parts like they’ve always done, since they were real little. Bucky leans his head against his ma’s shoulder, and watches Steve get really into the story, his eyes lit up just like they used to when he was that tiny little kid Bucky loved more than anyone else.

He’s bigger now, but Bucky still loves him just as hard as he did then.

This is Bucky’s favorite thing about Christmas: watching Steve enjoy it. It always has been, even when he was a kid himself. He can’t stop smiling as he watches Steve across the room, and when Steve glances over at him, his responding grin is breathtaking.

“‘But I heard him exclaim,’” Sarah says in her animated Irish accent, a mimic of the one her mother had, “‘ere he drove out of sight—’”

They all join in for the end, reciting it loudly and enthusiastically all together:

“‘ _Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!_ ’”

That used to be the cue for the kids to go to bed and wait for Santa. Nowadays, it’s the cue for the parents to retire for the night, old fogies that they are. But Becca goes, too, swiping a finger conspiratorially across her nose, and proclaiming that she “shan’t be the reason Santa doesn’t come this year.”

Steve smiles at Bucky across the room when everyone has gone upstairs.

“Nothing like a Barnes Family Christmas Eve, huh?” he says.

Bucky smiles back. “Not a Barnes Family Christmas Eve without the Rogerses. Both of ‘em,” he replies.

Steve’s grin grows, and his eyes don’t leave Bucky’s.

Bucky shifts, and accidentally transfers his weight onto the pocket his work phone is in.

And it’s like this beautiful facade — this perfect snow globe he’s been living inside for the past few hours — shatters all around him.

Whatever magic this is with Steve—it’s all a lie. Bucky has been _lying_ to Steve, and if there actually is something going on here, and he isn’t just imagining it because of some _Christmas magic_ bullshit…he needs to come clean.

Fuck. Oh, _shit_.

“Hey,” Steve calls over to him, pulling Bucky’s attention away from his panic spiral, and over to soft, blue eyes. He’s got his head tilted just a little, gentle concern written like poetry across his face. “What’s wrong, Buck?”

Steve has always been able to read Bucky like a book.

Bucky wets his lips. Sighs. Pulls out his work phone, and places it on the arm of the loveseat next to him.

No notifications.

“Steve—” Bucky begins, but his voice is barely above a whisper, and he doesn’t know what to say. “Steve, I don’t know—what you’re doing here.”

It’s not really how he meant to start this, but Steve doesn’t seem perturbed. He just gets this little smile playing across his lips, while his eyes stay focused on their concern.

“I’m honestly not sure, either,” he breathes, like a confession.

The only light in the room is the fire in the hearth, a few candles behind the sofa, and the Christmas tree over Bucky’s shoulder. It softens them out, makes whispers feel loud. Makes secrets feel tellable, if only for tonight.

“You let me sleep on your chest,” Bucky points out quietly. Steve’s eyebrows lift just a little. The look in his eyes lightens and gentles. Just a little. “You held my hand on our walk. You have _so_ much work to do, but you dropped it to come up here for Christmas. And you took your _bike_ , which leads me to believe it was a last-minute decision. You—you surprised me by showing up here.”

Steve looks so beautiful across the room, lit by firelight and the twinkling Christmas tree. He watches Bucky with such fondness, it almost hurts. It hurts.

When Steve is sure Bucky’s finished for the moment, the corner of his mouth pulls into an even softer smile.

“Yeah, Buck,” is all he says. Like it’s obvious. Like it’s inevitable.

Bucky still doesn’t understand.

Except…no. He does. He does understand, but he doesn’t want to. Because if Steve is offering him this thing that he’s wanted like dying for his entire fucking life, Bucky doesn’t know what to do about that. He’s been so sure that Steve doesn’t want him like that. Steve has _never_ wanted Bucky like that, and Bucky has been trying _so hard_ to make peace with that.

But here. Now. Steve is just gazing at him, a chasm of space between them, with something too close to everything Bucky wants in his eyes.

Bucky’s chest caves in. He can’t bear this. He can’t.

“ _Steve_ ,” he whispers, tears pricking in his eyes. He touches his work phone. “I have to tell you something.”

Steve’s eyebrows furrow. He sighs. “Just. Just give me one second?” he asks.

That—what? Bucky is terribly confused, but he nods. Of course. He’ll give Steve anything.

Steve pulls out his phone. Which is…just about the last thing Bucky expects him to do. He pulls out his phone, and starts typing something on it.

Bucky watches him, utterly bewildered, until Steve stops typing, and slips his phone back in his pocket, looking back up at Bucky with some kind of intensity that Bucky _really_ doesn’t understand. He feels lost here, like he’s missing something.

His work phone lights up beside him.

Heart sinking inside his caved-in chest, and feeling as though he’s watching all his hopes scatter to the four winds, Bucky glances down at it.

One new message, to Winter, from Steve:

_Buck. I’ve known it was you the whole time._

Bucky chokes. He looks up at Steve wildly, only to be met with gentle kindness, and— _no!_

“ _What?!_ ” Bucky gasps, his chest constricting. He can’t fucking _breathe_. “No. Nonononono, Steve—oh _god!_ ”

Steve is suddenly out of his chair, crossing the chasm between them in two easy steps, and dropping to his knees between Bucky’s. Bucky tries to cover his face with both hands, so _fucking_ ashamed of this, but Steve doesn’t let him. Just gently moves his hands away, and reaches up to cradle Bucky’s face between his own.

“Hey,” he murmurs, something solid and firm in his coaxing tone, reaching through the panic, and finding Bucky there. “Pal.”

“No, Steve, oh _god_ , oh— _How?!_ ”

Bucky is reeling, but Steve just smiles, reverent. He brushes one thumb across Bucky’s lower lip, and breathes out, “Sweetheart, I’d know this mouth anywhere.”

And then he leans up, and kisses Bucky’s mouth.

Their lips fit together, and Bucky whines into this kiss. His trembling hands somehow find their way into Steve’s hair, though Bucky still can’t even tell up from down. Steve is kissing him, here in his childhood home. He’s kissing him, and it feels like everything. Like _everything_.

After a minute, completely lost to anything but Steve’s mouth and hands and hair, Bucky gaspingly pulls away.

Steve looks up at him, pink, kissed lips, and blue eyes full of concern. “What is it, baby?” he asks. Bucky shudders with need, and groans.

“Steve, I—” he stammers. He _has_ to know: “Are you sure about this? Because I won’t be able to take it if you’re not, I really, really won’t.”

A golden smile lights Steve’s face, and he nods, brushing his thumbs over Bucky’s cheekbones. “I’m sure,” he breathes, like he means it.

“I _need_ you to be sure,” Bucky burbles, realizing belatedly that he’s crying, tears falling into Steve’s palms against his face. “Stevie, I can’t—I can’t do this if you don’t want what I want, I can’t. I _can’t_ , I won’t survive it.”

“Bucky—”

“I’m still so _fucking_ in love with you, Steve,” Bucky sobs, unable to stop it. “I always have been, I never stopped, I never—”

He breaks off into sobbing gasps, and Steve stands, just so he can sit next to Bucky on the loveseat, and pull him against his chest.

“Buck,” Steve sighs into his hair while Bucky weeps into Steve’s sweater. “Sweetheart. I’m so sorry, honey. I had no idea, Buck, really. I’m so fucking sorry I did this to you. I didn’t know. For _way_ too long, I didn’t know.”

Bucky wants to argue with that. Wants to tell Steve it’s not his fault, it was never his fault. But he can barely breathe right now, let alone talk. And Steve just holds him. Just lets him cry through it. Waits, with only murmured comforts and soft kisses in Bucky’s hair, until the panic subsides. Until Bucky can breathe again.

When he can, Bucky sits up, pushing his hair out of his face, where it’s been plastered there by his tears. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew it was me?” is the first thing, out of all the questions tumbling through his mind, that he can think to ask.

“Well—” Steve begins, considering. His hands are still on Bucky’s arms, rubbing up and down comfortingly. “Buck, you knew it was _me_ , I wasn’t anonymous to you. And you didn’t say anything. So I figured you either didn’t want me to know it was you, or you…I don’t know, wanted to maintain the fantasy? I wasn’t going to ruin that for you.”

Oh. That’s sweet as fuck, Jesus.

“Were you trying to start something last week?” Bucky asks, honestly dreading the answer no matter what it is. “Between us. Were you trying to—?”

He cuts himself off because Steve is giving him a sweet little sad nose scrunch.

“Oh, fuck,” Bucky whispers, closing his eyes.

“I should have been clearer,” Steve tells him, hand on his face again, tilting it back up, the movement opening Bucky’s eyes. “I talked to Sam. He didn’t tell me anything, but when I asked him if he thought that you thought I only wanted that night, he gave me this look that I swear could burn through concrete.”

A wet laugh bubbles out of Bucky’s throat. He’s gotten that look from Sam before, too. But then, suddenly, emotions _everywhere_ , he groans again.

“You were trying to start something with me, and I left you in the middle of the night,” he laments. “ _Fuck_ , that must’ve made you feel—”

“Ask,” Steve interrupts firmly, “don’t speculate.”

Bucky takes a breath. Wets his lips. Tries. “How did—you feel about that?”

Steve smiles at him again, but it’s a little bit sad. “When I woke up, and I realized you’d left, I gotta admit, I felt pretty sad, Buck. I wanted to wake you up with kisses, make you breakfast. I thought we were actually, finally starting something. So yeah, I was disappointed, pal, but I was also worried about you. You didn’t leave a note, or text me, or anything. I was worried you were regretting it, or that I’d _pushed_ you—”

“No,” Bucky cuts in sharply, grabbing Steve’s jaw in one hand to force him to focus on Bucky’s face.

“Buck—”

“No, Stevie,” Bucky insists. “You can finish that thought in a minute, but I need you to stop thinking _that_ right now. Every single thing we did, Steve, I _wanted_. Okay?”

Steve pauses. Then nods.

“You hear me?” Bucky asks, like he used to when Steve was small, and hungry for trouble, and Bucky had to talk him down.

Steve nods again. “You wanted it.”

“ _All_ of it,” Bucky presses. He searches Steve’s face, and then asks, more gently, “You believe me?”

Steve gives him the sweetest, softest smile “Yeah, Buck,” he murmurs. “I always believe you.”

The words, and the way Steve says them, light a little bonfire inside Bucky’s chest. Warming him from the inside. Beginning to chase away the coldness of uncertainty.

“Okay,” Bucky whispers, releasing Steve’s chin to run his fingers through his beard instead. “Good. You may continue.”

Steve chuckles. “Okay,” he says. “I didn’t push you. But I was worried maybe I had, and I wasn’t sure if I should say anything about it, and _you_ weren’t, so I followed your lead. But then you...you messaged me. As Winter.”

Now it’s Bucky’s face that burns. “Yeah.”

“You sent me pictures,” Steve breathes, almost reverently. Like he can’t believe it happened. “You started _sexting_ me.”

Bucky tucks his chin. “Yeah,” he whispers.

“I realized that you _must_ want me,” Steve tells him, tilting his chin up again, refusing to let Bucky lie in his shame over this. “I thought maybe you got scared, or something. Maybe you needed the character? But I realized there was hope.” He wets his lips, and looks over Bucky’s face. “Can I kiss you?” he asks, the barest whisper.

Bucky is already nodding eagerly before Steve has even finished asking. _Yes_ , Steve can kiss him. Any time. All the time. Forever. _Please_.

Steve grins and leans in, pressing their lips together in a tender, chaste kiss. It’s brief, but he lingers there, by Bucky’s mouth, running his thumb over Bucky’s cheek, back and forth. Back and forth. And like he can’t help it, he kisses Bucky again.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Steve asks after their lips part, still lingering right here he is. “Why you left?”

Bucky lets out a gusting sigh, and they’re so close together, it blows Steve’s long hair back a little. “Fuck, Stevie,” he says, “I was so fucking scared.”

“Scared of what?” Steve’s brows furrow again.

“That you’d wake up, and you wouldn’t want me anymore,” Bucky shrugs. “That all you really wanted was that one night. Steve,” he soughs, “I’ve been in love with you since I was _sixteen_.” He shakes his head, knows that’s not true. “Probably _much_ longer, actually. I already had and lost you once, I couldn’t do it again. So I ran.”

“But you messaged me.”

“Yeah,” Bucky sighs. “I did.”

“Why?”

“Well, I didn’t know you knew it was me!”

Steve laughs, bright, at Bucky’s defensive exasperation. “Bucky,” he admonishes warmly, and Bucky gets the hint.

“I wanted you,” he answers bluntly. “I _want_ you. I love you.”

Steve eyes dazzle with his smile. “Bucky,” he breathes wonderingly. “I love you. I’m in love with you.”

Bucky gasps, his heart flips over, his eyes tear up again. “You are?” he asks. “Stevie, are you really?”

“Yeah,” Steve laughs. “I really fuckin’ am, pal.”

Bucky’s the one who closes the distance between them this time, darting forward to slam their mouths together. Steve’s tongue swipes over Bucky’s lower lip almost at once, and Bucky opens to him, moaning as Steve licks into his mouth.

It’s _so_ much better than last time. There’s no countdown clock to when this will end this time, for one thing. And Steve loves him. He _loves_ him. The person Bucky has been so in love with for so long…loves him back.

Holy _fuck_.

Steve fists one hand in Bucky’s shirt, and drags him closer. Breaks their kiss to trail more little kisses across his jaw, down his neck.

“Baby,” Steve moans, and Bucky whimpers, clinging to him. “Has it hit you yet that everything I said to Winter, I was actually saying to you?”

Bucky freezes. Steve mumbles a laugh into his skin.

“I’ll take that as a no,” he says, and goes back to kissing and licking Bucky’s neck.

Bucky’s eyes flutter, and a choked-off moan rattles through him. “Fuck, Steve, really?” he gasps. “Everything?”

“Yes, everything.” Teeth scrape against Bucky’s collarbone. “You’re goddamn amazing, and hot as hell, and I wanna fuck you _so_ much more than I already have, and _fuck_ , I love you, Bucky. I love you so fucking much, c’mere.”

Bucky is already practically in Steve’s lap, he doesn’t have much more _here_ to _come_. He’s rucking up Steve’s sweater, trying to get at bare skin. Steve’s hands are divided, one on the back of Bucky’s neck, the other sliding down the back of his pants so he can palm at Bucky’s ass.

“Stevie,” Bucky begs, already gone for it, “Stevie, please. Please, baby, will you fuck me?”

Steve groans, and kisses Bucky’s mouth again. “ _Yes_ ,” he says emphatically. “Yes, honey, I want that so bad. Let’s go upstairs?”

Bucky nods. Steve kisses him again. God, he’s so ready to get used to this.

“Okay,” Steve murmurs, nuzzling his nose against Bucky’s, “lemme just tell my mom not to wait up.”

“Okay,” Bucky agrees, and giggles. “You’re gonna spend the night in my room.”

Steve grins. “Yeah, I am.” He leans in and gives Bucky another eskimo kiss. Bucky doesn’t think he’s ever in his life been this happy.

As Steve pulls his phone from his pocket again to text his mom, it isn’t lost on Bucky that Steve is just as happy about this as he is. That Steve can’t stop kissing Bucky, keeps pulling him closer even when they’re already pressed together, wants to spend the night sleeping in Bucky’s bed.

Bucky loves him so fucking much, and Steve—

Steve loves Bucky, too. Fuck, can that really be true? After all this time?

Looking down at his phone, Steve suddenly makes a face, and groans, typing furiously.

“What?” Bucky laughs.

Steve rolls his eyes, and turns his phone screen to Bucky.

_Hey, Ma. I finally told him. He loves me, too!! Gonna spend the night in his room tonight. Love you!_

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

_Okay, sweetie, have fun! Just remember the walls are pretty thin._

_So happy for you two!!!!!_

_MOM!!!!!!!!_

Bucky laughs so hard, he falls against the back of the sofa. Steve chases him, trying to look annoyed, but just managing to look absolutely lovestruck as he buries his face in Bucky’s neck, pressing his lips to Bucky’s throat again and again while Bucky giggles.

Finally, Steve decides he’s had enough, and stops Bucky’s cascading laughter with a hard kiss, and fingers hooking inside Bucky’s waistband.

“ _Ughhuh_ , _fuck_ ,” Bucky groans as Steve starts inching into his pants. “Okay, okay, _fine_ , Stevie, I get the point. My room. Right now.”

It takes some untangling to get them both on their feet, especially since neither of them seem to be willing to detach their mouths from each other for long enough to stand up normally.

Once they’re upright, Steve seems to have fully lost patience, and just hoists Bucky up into his arms. Laughing into Steve’s mouth, Bucky wraps his legs around that shockingly tiny waist, and fully delights in the way his best-friend-slash-love-of-his-life carries him through the living room, up the stairs, and into his bedroom.

Steve kicks the door shut behind them and walks to the bed, dropping Bucky into it with a satisfying bounce, and then climbing in over him, eagerly pulling Bucky’s shirt up and off over his head as he goes.

“Hey, Stevie, wait—” Bucky gasps as teeth sink into his neck.

Steve sits up immediately, hands up like he’s surrendering, and it’s so sweet, and also so ridiculous, that Bucky giggles madly at it.

Steve looks down at him fondly. “Okay, so that wasn’t a ‘wait, I don’t want to do this at all,’ then?”

“No,” Bucky laughs, “but you are so considerate. I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” Steve tells him sweetly.

Bucky closes his eyes and lets that wash over him. “You really do?”

“I love you,” Steve repeats, pressing it into Bucky’s forehead with his kiss. “I really, really love you, Bucky.” He sits up a little, and Bucky opens his eyes to look into bluest blue. “Is that what you needed?”

“Almost,” Bucky says. He can’t stop smiling. But: “I just need to make sure you want to be with me. After this is over, after you go back home. I need to know that you’re still gonna want me.”

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “God, baby,” he sighs, “I _hate_ that I’ve made you feel like this.”

He bites his lip, and looks down at Bucky with that expression on his face like he’s ready to fight a god to do what’s right.

"I want you, Bucky,” Steve swears. “I want you now, and tomorrow, and next week, and next year, and as long as _you_ want _me_.”

Bucky’s _melting_. “We’ve had some misunderstandings,” he says, pulling Steve back down so he can mouth at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. “I just…I need to know what this is.”

Steve hums. “This is me and you,” he murmurs, turning his head to kiss Bucky’s hair. “This is Steve and Bucky. What we were always supposed to be.”

“Together?”

“Boyfriends, if you want.”

“Oh, _god_ ,” Bucky moans. “I want, Steve. I really, really want. For like fifteen _years_.”

“Well, then,” Steve purrs, nosing down Bucky’s face until their mouths are almost touching again, “we’ve got some time to make up, don’t we?”

“ _Fuck_ , yeah,” Bucky sighs, and Steve seals their lips together again.

Steve starts undoing Bucky’s fly, yanking his jeans down his hips, while his tongue fully colonizes Bucky’s mouth. Bucky pulls at Steve’s sweater in return, yanking it up to his armpits, but he can’t get it off with their mouths attached like this, especially as Steve’s teeth begin to worry Bucky’s lower lip. And there’s _no_ way Bucky’s going to willingly put an end to _that_. But he _really_ wants Steve to be naked right now. So he finds himself torn.

Luckily, Steve makes the decision for him, sitting up suddenly to strip the sweater off over his head, then strip Bucky’s jeans and boxer briefs all the way off as one.

Bucky’s already pulling him back down, wants Steve mouth back on his own, even though that means slowing the stripping down. But Steve is _perfect_. He really, really is. He gets out of his own jeans without forcing Bucky to stop kissing him the way he’s always wanted to. The way he wants to kiss him for the rest of his life.

“Baby,” Steve mumbles once they’re both naked, and he’s lying between Bucky’s legs while Bucky reaches over and digs in his bedside drawer, “I fucking _love_ it when you’re naked, I really hope you know that. If you could be always naked, that would be ideal for me.”

Bucky laughs, rolling halfway over so he can get a look into his drawer. There are a lot of sex toys in here, and he’s found three different types of lube so far, but no condoms. Yes, _that_ is the kind of year he’s been having.

“Feel like you’d be the _only_ person that’d be ideal for,” he says fondly as he searches.

Steve isn’t helping. He’s running his hands all over Bucky’s bare skin, groping his naked body, and it’s _very_ distracting.

“I could make it ideal for you, too,” Steve says confidently, leaning down to bite Bucky’s hip and make him yelp. “Keep you in the apartment for like a week, all mine. Never let you get dressed.” Bucky shivers, and Steve’s lips curl into a smirk against his hip. “Only thing you’ll _ever_ wear is lace. And only when you’re a good boy. How’s that sound?”

“Fuck, Stevie, that sounds amazing,” Bucky moans, trying not to squirm at the idea of it all. He feels hot all over. “Don’t know that Sam would like it so much, though.”

Steve shrugs. “I’ll fuckin’ pay for him to go on vacation. Want you all to myself, long as I can have you.”

Bucky turns to look at Steve where he’s leaning his head against Bucky’s hipbone, smiling softly. “That’s gonna be a long time, Stevie,” he whispers honestly.

Steve grins, and Bucky’s heart swells.

“Say, pal,” Steve asks, nodding toward the nightstand, “whatcha not finding in there?”

Bucky sighs, and tosses a bottle of his favorite lube for Steve to catch. “Condoms,” he answers. “I know I’ve got a few, but I can’t find them.”

Steve’s eyes narrow. “Why not?”

“Because I have an entire sex shop in this drawer, Steve.”

Steve’s eyes _light up_.

“Just give me a minute,” Bucky laughs. He goes to turn back to the drawer, but a large, warm hand squeezing his thigh stops him. He looks back to a hungry expression on Steve’s face. An expression that makes Bucky shiver. “What?”

Steve’s eyes are so fucking blue, so full of love. He trails his fingers lightly up the inside of Bucky’s thigh, and asks, “What if I fucked you bare?”

Bucky hisses. His dick doesn’t so much twitch as _lurch_ under Steve’s abs. Which Steve definitely feels, because he grins sweetly in response.

“ _Can_ you?” Bucky breathes.

Steve nods. “Can _you?_ ”

“Steve, you’re the only person who’s fucked me for over a year,” Bucky tells him frankly.

A complicated series of emotions crosses Steve’s face. First, he looks outraged that no one has been fucking Bucky, then, he looks jealous of the hypothetical person who _could_ have been fucking Bucky, then, he looks _sad_ about another hypothetical person fucking Bucky, and finally, he realizes exactly how ridiculous he’s being and looks slightly bewildered at himself.

Maybe Bucky can read Steve like a book, too.

He watches the whole thing with deep amusement, and a confusing level of arousal. Jesus, Bucky really is hot for this dork in any and every circumstance, isn’t he?

“You done?” he asks, charmed. Steve glares up at him, and Bucky grins back. “If you are,” he offers, “you can fuck me.”

The glare _instantly_ turns right back into hunger. Steve pushes himself up on his arms, then pushes Bucky down on his back.

“ _Fuck!_ ” Bucky gasps as Steve’s teeth latch onto his throat again, pressing him into his bed.

“I _love_ you naked,” Steve repeats, kissing his way down Bucky’s neck.

“So you’ve said,” Bucky replies breathlessly, and writhes under Steve’s strong bulk.

“And I mean it,” Steve says, licking one of Bucky’s nipples and making him jerk. “You’re _stunning_ , sweetheart.”

Bucky whimpers.

“But sometime soon,” Steve continues, moving over to the other nipple, and repeating his attention there, “I _really_ want to see you in some of that lingerie you have.” A kiss between his pecs. “And that fucking _harness_.”

“Yes, baby,” Bucky pants. “Yes, anything. _Anything_ for you, Stevie.”

Steve closes his eyes, and nuzzles Bucky’s belly where he’s been making his way down his body. Bucky cards his fingers into Steve’s hair, scritches his scalp.

“Anything,” he promises again. “Everything. It’s all yours, baby. Always has been. I love you.”

“God, Buck,” Steve sighs. “I love you so much.”

And then, suddenly, there are hands under Bucky’s knees, pushing them up to his chest, and Steve is ducking down and laving his hot, wet tongue across Bucky’s tight hole, and Bucky arches and _gasps_.

“ _Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck_ —” he lets loose while Steve rims him. “Stevie— _Stevie—!_ ”

Steve laughs breathily against his entrance. “Baby, honey,” he warns, “you gotta be quiet, sweetheart.” And then he goes right back to it.

Bucky ends up having to bite down on his own fist to keep himself from making noise when Steve starts to fuck him with his tongue, getting him wet and open with just his mouth. It’s glorious, and eternal, and Bucky is going to combust, he’s going to burst into flames and die if he doesn’t get Steve’s enormous cock inside him _right now_.

Steve laughs, lifting his head to look delightedly up at Bucky, which is how Bucky finds out he said that last part out loud.

“You think my cock is enormous?” that blond asshole asks him, smirking.

“Don’t be cute,” Bucky snaps at him. “You know full well what you’re packing.”

Crawling up over him again like a cat, Steve gets this terrifyingly predatory look in his eyes. Bucky is about to be consumed, and he’s _never_ been more excited.

“Do you like my enormous cock?” Steve asks, lowering his head slowly, and nipping at Bucky’s earlobe. “You like feeling it inside you, stretching you open for me? Like how full I make you feel?”

“Fuck, Stevie, _yes_ ,” Bucky gusts out, no control over himself anymore. He tries to pull Steve closer, to thrust up toward him, but Steve grabs his wrists, and pins them either side of his head, stays just out of reach of Bucky’s desperate cock. “Love the way you fill me up. No one feels like you— _nothing_ does.”

“Yeah, honey,” Steve breathes, sympathetic and condescending at once. “You need it.”

“I _need_ it,” Bucky sobs. “I need _you_.”

“You got me, baby,” Steve tells him, sugar sweet. And then the blunt head of his cock is at Bucky’s hole, breaching his rim and sliding in raw.

Bucky didn’t even notice Steve slick himself up. Must have done it while he was eating him out, and Bucky was distracted. He’s so slick, and thick, and _huge_ , and Bucky loves Steve so fucking much, loves his cock, loves his mouth, every part of him.

He wants to ride Steve later. Tomorrow, maybe. Sit on that dick for Christmas. Wants Steve to fuck his mouth. Wants to bury his face in Steve’s ass, and eat him for hours. He wants _everything_.

And Steve wants to give him all of that.

They’ve waited long enough. And they have so much time be slow and languid. It’s not what either of them need right now.

Steve starts fucking Bucky deep and hard right away, seals their lips together to swallow the noises Bucky can’t stop himself from making. He’s pinned down by Steve’s body again, and basking in every inch of skin on skin.

At some point, Steve shifts, reaches between them and takes hold of Bucky’s cock, stroking him in time with his thrusts. Bucky comes, trembling, in no time, teeth buried in Steve’s shoulder to keep from shouting his name. Steve follows quickly behind, his face pressed against Bucky’s neck, spilling inside him, where he belongs.

It takes a minute to catch their breath. It takes a minute to stop repeating _I love you, I love you, I love you_ over and over when they do. Eventually, Steve rolls off of Bucky, and Bucky makes a sloppy gesture toward the nightstand, muttering something that sounds enough like _wipes_ that he calls it a win. Steve seems to understand him enough, and opens the bedside drawer again.

“Jesus fuck, you _do_ have an entire sex shop in here,” he says in awe. “Can I use _all_ of these on you?”

“I hope you do,” Bucky mumbles, reaching out blindly for any part of Steve he can reach. He ends up with Steve’s wrist in his hand, and a soft chuckle in his ear, right before Steve starts cleaning the cum off his chest with one of the wipes from his drawer. “I want everything with you, Stevie.”

He keeps lying there, content, eyes closed, until his chest has been tenderly cleaned up, and Steve has gently spread his legs to clean between them, too. His eyes are still closed when lips press against his.

He hums happily into the kiss.

Steve settles down between Bucky’s legs again, hands under his chin on Bucky’s ribs, gazing up at him adoringly. Bucky gazes right back, just as adoringly, and starts stroking Steve’s hair.

“What are we gonna do tomorrow?” he asks.

“Hmm?”

“Our parents and Becca,” Bucky clarifies. “What are we gonna do about telling them?”

Steve thinks about it for a moment. “We could just text them all right now,” he says. “My ma already knows.”

“If we text them all right now, Becca will storm in here asking for details.”

“She better not, I’m naked.”

Bucky laughs. Loves this man. “Okay, how ‘bout we wait till morning, then?”

“How ‘bout we just go downstairs together, holding hands,” Steve suggests, “and act like this has been the case all along?”

Bucky snorts. “Yeah, that’ll go over well, considering I think they all may have made themselves scarce tonight so we could ‘ _talk_.’” He says the last word with a weird breathy voice, air quotes heavily implied.

“You _think?_ ” Steve asks, eyes narrowed judgily. “Buck, have you not realized our whole family has been rooting for us to get together for _years?_ ”

“No!” Bucky cries, indignant. “I only just found out our parents knew we were fucking in high school! And don’t say ‘ _our family_ ’ like that, Jesus Christ, I know I call your mom ‘Aunt Sarah,’ but I’m literally naked, and you’re lying on top of me.”

Steve’s eyes squeeze shut and crinkle at the corners as he laughs at that.

Bucky watches him, and smiles. A question flickers through his mind, not for the first time tonight. One he hasn’t had a chance to ask yet.

“How long?”

Steve looks back up at him with soft, happy eyes. “How long what?” he asks back.

Bucky takes a breath. “How long have you loved me?”

Steve’s smile grows wider. “You want a timeline?”

Bucky knows he’s being teased, but he does, actually, want that. So he tilts his chin up primly, and sniffs. “Yes.”

Steve laughs again. Bucky _loves_ that sound.

“Okay,” Steve agrees, and shifts around a little between Bucky’s legs, settling in even more. “When I was born—”

“ _Steve!_ ” Bucky groans, laughing, but Steve fixes him with a Look, capital L.

“You want a timeline?” he demands, grinning. “I’m giving you a timeline.”

“Fine,” Bucky concedes. “Go on.”

“Thank you,” Steve tells him with great dignity. “When I was born, my mom lived with this family called the Barneses.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. Steve ignores him.

“I grew up with this kid—”

“I’m older than you!” Bucky protests.

Steve glares at him. “I didn’t say it was _you_. Let me tell the story!”

Bucky huffs in response, but doesn’t say anything else.

“Anyway,” Steve continues pointedly, “this kid was my ride or die. My everything. When I was little, I used to think he was my heart.”

Bucky’s eyes go huge as he hisses in a gasp through parted lips. He’s trying not to interrupt again, but— Steve thought _what?_ About _Bucky?!_

Steve seems to see exactly what Bucky’s thinking on his face. He grins softly. Presses a kiss between Bucky’s ribs, and finds one of his hands to lace their fingers together.

“I loved him so much,” Steve breathes fervently, “and he loved _so_ hard. I thought all my love was stored in him.”

Another kiss, this one pressed to Bucky’s hand in his, and Steve continues. “As I got older, and learned that my heart was a meat organ inside my body, I understood that he wasn’t _really_ my heart.” Blue eyes looks up at Bucky through absurdly long, black eyelashes. “But he still had it,” Steve whispers.

Bucky’s breath catches in his chest.

“I didn’t know what that meant yet. Didn’t know why I felt like that.” Pink lips curled in a wry smile. “The year he went to high school, and left me in middle school, I cried every single day, in the bathroom during lunch, because I missed him so much.”

“You fucking loser,” Bucky laughs — can’t help it — trying to hold back the tears that want to spring into his eyes right now.

“Hey!” Steve cries with great offense.

“Stevie,” Bucky presses, “ _I_ cried every day in the bathroom during lunch that year, because I missed _you_ so much.”

The look that lights up Steve’s face at that revelation can only be described as utter delight. “You fucking loser!” he echoes, and Bucky laughs harder.

Steve kisses his chest a few times while Bucky lets the laughter ride through his body. Enjoying this, enjoying being here with Steve, naked and laughing.

When he’s done, and smiling down at the man in his bed, he’s met with that cornflower blue again.

“This kid, though,” Steve says softly, bringing them back. “He’s always been my best friend. _Always_ been on my side. Never even thought of what life would be like without him. It wasn’t something I could contemplate.”

“Me either,” Bucky whispers.

Steve’s smile in beautiful. He kisses Bucky’s hand. “One day,” he continues, “when I was fifteen, he offered to kiss me. Just because I hadn’t been kissed before. I thought he was joking, but I couldn’t get it outta my head. I _wanted_ him to. I didn’t just want to be kissed, I wanted _him_ to kiss me. I was an idiot — still am — and I thought it was just because he meant so much to me, and I wanted my first kiss to be special. He was so special.” There’s something terribly deep, and unending in his eyes as he confesses, “He’s always been special. So I asked him to kiss me.”

“You actually _told_ him to kiss you,” Bucky points out through the thickness in his throat, “and then you kissed _him_.”

Steve shrugs, unrepentant, smiling crooked. “You love me.”

“I do,” Bucky confirms, all of the truth within him.

“So, I kissed him,” Steve says, grinning. “I kissed him, and he kissed me, and then we did… _other stuff_.”

Bucky chuckles at the low, suggestive tone with which Steve says ‘ _other stuff_.’

“And we did _more_ other stuff,” Steve goes on. “And we _kept_ doing other stuff. For more than a year, we took each other apart. I memorized his body. How he looked. How he felt under my hands. The ways by which I could give him pleasure, make him feel good. For a year, we belonged to each other, in a way.”

Bucky nods, biting his lip, because Steve is right. They belonged to each other, they did. Maybe they always have.

“But it wasn’t ever supposed to last very long,” Steve says sadly. “We were leaving for different schools after that year. I thought it was supposed to be temporary. And it _sucked_ saying goodbye to him. Even worse when we both got to school, and barely had time to speak to each other. But I thought that year was all it was supposed to be.”

His gaze drops from Bucky’s eyes for the first time. Like he’s ashamed. But he doesn’t have anything to ashamed of, Bucky thinks, as Steve says to his belly, “I met this girl. I started seeing her. I didn’t know to tell him. I liked her a lot, and she made me happy, but thinking about telling him, I just felt sick. I thought, okay, I’ll tell him when I see him. Face to face will be better. But then—”

“He showed up on your doorstep,” Bucky completes the thought for him. The biggest mistake Bucky ever made.

“Yeah,” Steve says, looking up again. Something sparkles in his eyes. Regret, Bucky thinks, and grief. But also wonder. Also love.

“He told me he was in love with me. I didn’t understand. Didn’t know what that even _meant_. I was seventeen, I didn’t know if I was _capable_ of being in love. All I knew was that when he stumbled away from me, and wouldn’t look back, I felt like I was dying.”

Steve’s voice cracks on that, and Bucky feels swept up in all of his mistakes. All of the ways he didn’t even know he hurt Steve that day.

“I tried calling him,” Steve continues, “but he declined the call after one-and-a-half rings. I should have kept trying. But I knew I’d hurt him, and I didn’t want to keep hurting him, and I was a coward, so I waited for him to come to me. That took three years.”

Steve wets his lips. “I’m so sorry, pal,” he breathes.

Bucky shakes his head, “ _I_ am,” he insists. “I shouldn’t have—”

“No,” Steve argues before Bucky can even get the words out. “I won’t let you apologize for loving me, for telling me that you loved me, or for protecting yourself when I broke your heart. Okay? Not ever, I don’t want to hear that _ever_.”

Bucky’s face crumples. He nods. Okay.

He’s always thought of that day as his greatest fuck up. But Steve, apparently, doesn’t see it like that at all.

This is all so new, and Bucky is finding out that so much of what he’s believed, for so much of his life, has never been true. It’s a lot. But it’s _good_. They’re talking. They’ll keep talking. They’ll work it all out, together.

Bucky’s actually starting to believe that.

Steve nuzzles the back of Bucky’s hand in his, and goes back to his story. “In those three years,” he says, “I fell in love with that girl. And falling in love with her made me realize that I’d done this before.”

The look on his face, as he stares straight into Bucky’s entire soul, is breathtaking.

Steve takes a breath, and softly says, “All these feelings—they weren’t all that new after all. In some ways, I suppose, because _she_ was different, the feelings were different, too. But falling in love with her only made me _so_ painfully aware of how in love I already was with you.”

“You mean with him,” Bucky chokes out, trying to keep up the bit because he’s about to burst into tears again. “The kid.”

Steve gives him an unimpressed look that doesn’t hide the deep emotion welling up in his own face.

“The kid is you, Bucky, and you know it,” he says, not as flatly as he’s clearly going for.

Bucky grins through tears.

“I was in love with you,” Steve tells him sweetly. “I don’t know how long. Maybe since birth, I really don’t know.” Tears form in his eyes, too, which makes the ones in Bucky’s spill over.

“I was right the first time,” Steve says. “You’re my heart. You’re my whole, entire heart, Bucky Barnes, and it took me _far_ too long to really understand that.

“When we got back in touch, I knew those feelings were still there, but I loved Peggy, too, and I had a relationship with her, and a future all planned out. I was just thrilled you were back in my life. That was enough for me.”

Bucky sniffs, and nods. It was the same for him, but he doesn’t trust himself to speak right now.

“Then, she left,” Steve whispers into the back of Bucky’s hand. “But you were still there. Even when I was depressed, and miserable, and you had to fucking take care of me just to make sure I ate and showered, you were there.”

He scrunches his nose, and one tear escapes his right eye. “You were always right there,” he says, his voice thick. “You’d told me you were over me, so I didn’t say anything about my feelings for you, because just being near you and being in your life was enough for me. But I wasn’t confused anymore. I’ve loved you the whole, entire time.”

Bucky sobs, beaming. Steve grins at him wetly. Reaches up and wipes the tears from his cheeks, then scoots himself up Bucky’s body again to press their lips together.

When he pulls away, he doesn’t go far. His warm hand remains cupped against Bucky’s cheek. “Then you moved back in here, and I’ve been missing you like I lost a limb, pal,” he confesses. “Been _aching_ for you, literally. My heart’s been somewhere else, and _all_ I’ve wanted is for you to come back to me. You’ve been my best friend, and my favorite person, for my whole life, but suddenly, that wasn’t enough anymore. And then I found your Twitter, and I knew it was you _instantly_.”

“My mouth, you said,” Bucky whispers.

“Yeah,” Steve breathes back with a soft, sweet smile. “Spent enough years staring at it,” he says, brushing his thumb across Bucky’s bottom lip again. “ _Obsessed_ with those lips. Also,” he adds, “I’ve seen you naked before. I know we looked a little different back then, but you’re still you. You still look like you always have when you’ve got somethin’ in you and you’re feeling good.”

“Fuck,” Bucky moans, eyelids fluttering, thinking about that image of himself stored in Steve’s memory for years.

“I bought your set, then realized that might be gross, so I messaged you. Also kinda thought I’d shoot my shot a little bit, at least test the waters. But you acted like you didn’t know me.”

Bucky snorts. “You didn’t stop and think maybe it wasn’t me?”

“Nah, baby,” Steve dismisses, like that’s absurd. “I told you, I know what you look like. And I know how you talk when you’re flirting. Winter may be a character, but he’s you, pal. He’s all you.”

Bucky huffs out a breath, and leans his forehead up to Steve’s. He’s about to find himself in another Situation here. Maybe Steve can try out some of that stuff he talked about while he was texting Winter last week….

“Then last week happened,” Steve is saying, making Bucky’s attention focus on him again, “and I was hitting on you all fuckin’ night.”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“You just didn’t think I was serious about it.”

Bucky swallows. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, Stevie,” he says firmly. “I’ve been an idiot, too.”

“But you’re so brave,” Steve argues. “You told me you loved me, and I broke your heart.”

“Not on purpose.”

“But I did,” Steve tells him, just as firm. “And still, _you_ were the one who came back. You moved back here because your family needed you. You came to the city when you didn’t know what I wanted from you, and you slept with me because you _wanted_ me, even when you thought I didn’t really want you. You’re brave. And I’m an idiot, who’s _so_ fucking lucky you’re willing to give him another shot.”

“Not a shot, Stevie,” Bucky tells him, giving voice to this terrifying truth between them, “this is it. If this doesn’t work, I don’t know what I’ll do, but it’ll change our whole lives.”

“I know it will,” Steve agrees seriously. “I’m counting on it working.”

Bucky sucks in a breath, his heart racing in both excitement and fear. “That’s—”

“Scary,” Steve finishes. “Yeah.” He smiles. “But you’re brave.”

Bucky smiles back, slowly. “Yeah,” he whispers. “I’m brave.”

“And I’m ready to follow your lead,” Steve says.

They’re barely inches apart, breathing this thing that feels so much like a promise between them.

“Wow,” Bucky sighs out in absolute awe. “We’re really doing this.”

“We’ve been in love our whole lives,” Steve says, brushing their noses together. “I think it’s about time.”

Bucky can’t help but grin. “Me too.”

They lean in together, meet each other halfway. It feels different this time. It feels like home, and also like so much more. Like hope. Like… _forever_ , maybe.

Bucky pushes forward, rolls them over until he’s on top of Steve, rolling his hips as both of their cocks start to harden again.

They’re not gonna get any sleep tonight, but that’s more than okay with Bucky.

After all, they do have an awful lot of time to make up.

❄︎ ❄︎ ❄︎

The way it ends up happening is this:

On Christmas morning, Bucky wakes up naked, lying half on top of the warm, equally naked love of his entire fucking life, their legs all tangled together, half-hard. Steve wakes up to Bucky grinding into his hip, and doesn’t say a single word before he rolls slightly onto his side, just enough that he can take both of their dicks in one huge hand, and jerk them off together, kissing Bucky deeply, and ignoring both of their morning breath.

They come almost at the same time, which is heady and overwhelming, and then Bucky checks that the coast is clear before they both dart into the bathroom to take a quick shower together before anyone sees them.

Then it’s back into pajamas (clean ones), a deep breath and fortifying kiss in Bucky’s room, and they go downstairs to see their families and tell them the good news.

They’ve only just reached the doorway to the living room when Becca looks up, sees them, and shouts, “ _About fucking time!_ ” with her hands thrown over her head.

Bucky’s mouth drops open as Steve cackles behind him, snaking both arms around his waist, and pressing a kiss to his cheek.

“How do you already know?!” Bucky demands of his sister, as his face heats up from Steve’s lips on him in front of god and his entire family.

Becca waves her hand dismissively. “First off,” she says, “it was _incredibly_ obvious when Steve showed up yesterday, and secondly—” she smirks at them both, “—I heard you talking to each other in the shower a few minutes ago.”

Winnie smiles happily at them both. “And Sarah texted me last night,” she says smugly.

“Way to rat me out!” Sarah protests as her best friend cackles at her.

“I honestly thought maybe you’d worked it out over the phone, and that’s why Steve showed up after all,” George tells them honestly. “I was a little surprised when your ma told me it only happened last night.”

Bucky groans, and rolls his eyes. “I hate everyone in this house,” he mumbles while Steve giggles through pressing more and more kisses to his face.

❄︎ ❄︎

They’re all so happy for them, though, and it thaws something out in Bucky’s chest. Something he didn’t even know he was carrying.

It also means he has very few compunctions, when Steve sits cross-legged on the floor by the tree, about sprawling across his lap for the duration of presents-opening time.

And he has absolutely none, when Steve hands him a small wrapped gift that turns out to be a framed sketch of the two of them kissing under the mistletoe, about planting one smack on his lips, right there in front of everyone.

❄︎ ❄︎

“Come home with me,” Steve asks later that night.

They’re squished into a single armchair together, Bucky on Steve’s lap again. Winnie, George, Sarah, and Becca are out seeing a movie, leaving the two of them here to have some time alone together (Bucky fully intends to drag Steve upstairs in a minute so they can take this one opportunity to be as loud as they want, but he’s been really enjoying just cuddling quietly, petting each other’s hands and hair, and landing soft kisses every now and then).

“Please,” Steve says, “just for a few days. Or a week, if you can. Or forever, that’s fine, too.”

Bucky giggles, and scrunches his nose when Steve lays a kiss there.

“I _have_ to go home tomorrow morning,” Steve continues sadly. “And I’m really just gonna be working for the next week or two, but I _really_ don’t want to leave you here, and be separated from you when I only just _finally_ got you. You can hang out in the studio with me, and we can watch movies, or talk, or just be in the same place while I paint, and then when we get home, we can fuck the living shit out of each other until we both pass you. Huh? Come home with me, Buck, please.”

Bucky thinks about it, glancing over to where Alpine is lying on the floor in front of the fire.

“Can I bring Alps with me?” he asks.

“Are you fucking kidding?” Steve demands. “I _insist_ you bring your fuzzy daughter with you. I _love_ that chaos demon.”

Bucky hums, smiling, warm. “You _are_ kinda her stepdad, I guess,” he agrees, and laughs when Steve makes a face like that’s the most touching thing he’s ever heard.

Bucky leans down to brush their lips together. “Okay,” he says. “I gotta check with my folks, but if they can spare me, I’m all yours.”

“You’re mine either way,” Steve murmurs, and kisses Bucky deeply.

Bucky will never argue with that.

❄︎ ❄︎

“I don’t _wanna_ take my bike back down!”

Bucky chuckles, busy folding up his favorite sweaters, and packing them into a small suitcase. Since they got home from the movie, his parents and Becca have assured him no less than twenty-seven times _each_ that they’ll be fine without him for a week, that it’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and that they’re all just planning on lying around and eating leftovers all week anyway, _please, Bucky, just go_.

“Well,” Bucky replies calmly, “that’s what you get for not planning ahead and taking the train, isn’t it?”

Steve glares at him. He’s lounging across the bed, petting Alpine and watching Bucky pack, and he does not look intimidating at all. “Yeah, you’re welcome for taking important time off work last-minute so I could surprise you on Christmas Eve and start our relationship.”

Bucky’s chuckle turns into a cackle. “I am pretty happy about that,” he admits casually, glancing up at Steve, who can’t help but smile back at him.

“I want to drive down with you and Alps,” he says then, smile turning to a pout as he flops down on his back. “Stupid bike.”

“You love that bike,” Bucky reminds him. “You named it ‘the Valkyrie,’ and then paid someone to custom paint that on it like it’s a fuckin’ boat.”

Steve just makes a long groaning noise.

“It’s only a few hours,” Bucky adds, although he feels very much the same way. “And then you have us all week.”

“Yeah,” Steve replies, leaning back up on his elbow again, but he still sounds sad.

Bucky packs his final sweater, then crawls up onto the bed so he can lean forward and press a soft kiss to Steve’s mouth. “Just a few hours, baby,” he murmurs. “And then we have a whole week together.”

“I know,” Steve answers with a little smile. “We’ve just missed out on years of being together because I’m an idiot, I don’t want to miss any more time.”

“Steve,” Bucky coos, “it’s not gonna do us any good to look back at what _might_ have happened with us. We’re here now. We’re together _now_. Who knows what would have happened if we’d gotten together back in college? We were young and dumb, and we might not have made it. We’ve got a good chance now, sweetheart. And we have _years_ of friendship to build on.”

It’s something Bucky’s been thinking about all day. It would be so easy to mourn the years they _could_ have been together, but there’s absolutely nothing to guarantee that the two dumbasses who couldn’t get it together enough to admit their feelings for each other when they were both available and in love would have been able to make a serious adult relationship work.

They’re still, arguably, dumbasses, but at least now they’re _grown_ dumbasses.

Steve is staring at Bucky like he’s never seen anything like him before.

“Wow, Buck,” he whispers. “That’s…a great point.”

Bucky smiles, and kisses Steve again.

“All right, enough of that,” Becca’s voice groans from the doorway.

Bucky slowly turns to look at her. “I am in my _own room_ ,” he says dryly, while Steve snorts, and drops down onto the bed again, “kissing my _own boyfriend_.”

“With your _own door_ wide open,” Becca deadpans back. “Kate and I are doing the Hadestown lottery tomorrow, so if you want, Steve, I can take your bike down.”

Steve pops up into a sitting position so fast he almost knocks Bucky in the head with his body. “You’d do that, Bex?” he asks. “Why?”

“Because you two are gross,” she says, but she’s smiling in a way that betrays how cute she actually finds them. “Figure you probably want to drive together, and I fuckin’ love your bike, Steve.”

“Who’s Kate?” Bucky asks belatedly.

“Kate Bishop,” Becca answers, like that clarifies it.

“Are you dating her?”

“That the plan,” she says, and winks. “Steve, you good with me taking the Valkyrie?”

“I’m _thrilled_ about you taking the Valkyrie,” Steve gushes. “You drive her well, I trust you with her, and _thank you_ for letting me be gross with your brother.”

Bucky and Becca make the same cringing face.

“That’s not something I can control, sadly,” Becca says, turning to leave, at the same time Bucky screams, “ _STEVEN!_ ”

❄︎ ❄︎

Halfway to Brooklyn, very early the next morning, Bucky glances over at Steve. He’s in the passenger’s seat, singing along to the radio, with Alpine in his lap.

“Hey, Steve?” Bucky asks. They’ve been quiet the last few minutes, following Becca down the highway.

“Yeah?” Steve replies. He ducks to kiss Alpine’s head, breaking Bucky’s heart in the best way.

Bucky takes a breath. “Do you want me to stop?” he asks.

“Stop what?”

“The Winter thing,” Bucky clarifies, glancing over again. “Do you want me to stop doing that?”

Steve frowns, confused. “Why would I want you to stop doing that?”

“Well, I’m—I’m yours now,” Bucky says carefully. “I wasn’t sure if you were okay with sharing me.”

“I’m not sharing you,” Steve answers. “Am I?”

Bucky frowns, too. It doesn’t sound like they’re even close to being on the same page. They might be reading different books entirely. “I feel like we’re talking about different things,” he says.

“I thought—” Steve says slowly. “Do you sext with other customers?”

“What—?” Bucky yelps. “No! No, I told you the truth, baby, you’ve been the only one.”

“Okay,” Steve says, like that answers everything. “That’s what I thought. So, then I’m not sharing you.”

Bucky’s frown deepens. “It doesn’t bother you that I get naked, plug myself up, finger myself, jerk off, writhe around, take pictures of all of it, and share them with however wants to masturbate to them?” he asks incredulously.

“No.”

Bucky looks quickly over at Steve, but he looks completely honest, and completely at ease.

“Really?” Bucky asks.

“Actually,” Steve says, “I wanted to offer to help you with that. But only if you want me to. It’s your thing, and I don’t have to be involved at all if you don’t want.”

Bucky blinks, taken aback. “You want to _help_ me get naked on the internet?”

“Yeah,” Steve answers, and it sounds like, ‘ _duh_.’ “You’ve got an amazing eye for it, pal, but I imagine it takes a ton of time to set up every shot individually when you have to be both behind _and_ in front of the camera.”

“Yeah…?”

“Maybe I can be the photographer to your art director, then,” Steve offers. “I have _kind of_ an artistic eye, too.”

That makes Bucky snort. Understatement of the year, Steve’s talent is boundless.

“You also have to disguise your bedroom, right?” Steve goes on.

“Yeah.”

“Well, you could use my studio instead, if you want.”

“I…could?” Bucky asks, genuinely flabbergasted.

“Sure,” Steve shrugs. “Any days when I have it, it’s yours. Even if I’m using it, I’ll keep to one side and you can have the other, whatever you need. And you could stay over on the days you shoot, which gives me more time with you. I could even help you edit the photos, or…I don’t know, whatever you need me to do.”

Steve shares his studio with three other artists: a recently-graduated photographer from Steve’s alma mater, a technological genius who makes insanely intricate sculptures and installation art while _also_ innovating the world of technology, and this absolutely bananas performance artist who does something with knives that even Bucky’s twisted sense of humor doesn’t want to know all that much about. It’s this pretty tiny space in Brooklyn that they pass around in a kind of timeshare arrangement. They have their regular assigned days when it’s theirs, but they all know each other and support each other enough to make space when someone needs to rearrange the schedule. Steve has it every day for the next two weeks, since he has so much painting to do. Which worked out well, because the other three decided to take the end of the year off.

But now Steve is offering Bucky free use of his space, that’s already extremely cramped when he’s working on larger paintings, to take naked pictures of himself. He’s offering to _take those pictures for him._

“Why are you offering to help me so much?”

Steve makes a noise like he can’t believe Bucky is asking him this. “Because you’re fucking stunning,” he starts listing on his fingers right away, “you know what the fuck you’re doing, you run your own small business completely by yourself and you’re _good_ at it, and if you have one more person on your team, you could double the amount of sets you put out a month, thereby making _way_ more money. Plus,” he adds, smirking, “I _think_ you might be okay with me being with you in person during those shoots, where you might not feel the same about someone else.”

Bucky blinks. “You…you want to help me put _more_ pictures of your naked boyfriend on the internet,” he says, trying to process through his disbelief. He thought Steve would be jealous. Want him to stop showing off to everyone else. Bucky really _likes_ doing this, but he would have stopped for Steve, if that’s what he wanted.

But: “Yep,” Steve says, popping the ‘p.’

Bucky’s face slowly pulls into a smile. Steve _believes in_ him. He doesn’t just love Bucky, he truly _believes in_ him, too.

“Have I told you yet how much I fucking love you?” he asks breathlessly, trying hard to keep his eyes on the road instead of staring at his boyfriend.

“Not in the past ten minutes,” Steve answers with amusement.

“I fucking _love_ you.”

“I fucking love you, too, Buck,” Steve soughs. Then suddenly gasps excitedly. “I could be your fluffer!” he cries.

Bucky bursts out laughing. “You already fucking are!” he admits, thinking about all the times he’s fantasized about Steve while he’s been doing his shoots.

Steve looks at him with actual hearts in his eyes. “Oh, I _really_ fucking love you,” he gushes.

And Bucky laughs.

❄︎ ❄︎

The first day Bucky stays with Steve in the apartment he used to actually live in himself, Sam is out all day, not set to return until dinner time.

So, naturally, Steve fucks Bucky up against the kitchen counter. And then again, with Bucky spread over the kitchen table, and Steve standing beside it. And again, with Steve actually holding him up against the living room wall. Bucky is starting to feel like he will die soon from repeated orgasms, with only the absolute minimum refractory time in between, but then Steve makes the extremely valid point that they’ve yet to christen the couch, while they just so happen to be lying naked on it together, so Bucky gets his brains sucked out through his dick right then and there.

They let Alpine back out of the bedroom after that, and have to endure her irritated tail swooshes as they get dressed, including the ones where she walks right up to them and slaps them in the leg with it.

Worth it.

When Sam gets home, around 6pm, Steve reluctantly fucks off to his studio to get a few hours in working on his commission (he had _planned_ to be working all of today, but then got distracted stripping Bucky’s clothes off, and keeping them off for most of the rest of the day). Bucky stays behind, partly so he doesn’t distract Steve any more when he _really_ needs to work, and partly so he can hang out with Sam for a while.

They order Chinese food, and watch all the horror movies they love and Steve hates. It’s delightful.

And then Steve comes home, late into the night, tired and covered in paint, and Bucky gets to drag him into a shower, and wash him all over. And when some of Steve’s strength returns, and he presses Bucky into the wall, holding one of his legs up under his knee so he can push inside his hole, still stretched and slick from before—well, Bucky doesn’t complain in the least.

They fall asleep together in Steve’s bed again, just like a week ago. But this time, Bucky isn’t even a little bit afraid of the morning.

❄︎ ❄︎

“You know,” Steve says casually the next day, while he’s painting in his studio, and Bucky is lounged over the ratty, paint-stained sofa the artists keep in here, reading, “we could even do some tandem shoots, if we can keep both of us anonymous. For the Winter thing. If you want.”

Bucky stares at Steve for a whole minute, jaw dropped, while Steve doesn’t take his eyes off his canvas.

Then, wordlessly, Bucky drops his paperback to the floor, not giving a single shit about keeping his place, or where the book lands, as he jumps up off the sofa and crosses to Steve—

—and then sinks to his knees.

Steve tries valiantly to keep working, but it’s not very long at all before he has to put his brush down so he doesn’t ruin his work while Bucky’s mouth milks him dry.

❄︎ ❄︎

Another day or two passes similarly. Bucky can barely stop kissing Steve whenever he has the opportunity, and Steve finds ways to hold Bucky down and fuck him stupid as often as he can. They spend a lot of time in Steve’s studio, sometimes sitting in companionable silence, sometimes watching movies or marathoning TV shows, sometimes talking and talking and talking about everything under the sun. Bucky is so deeply, wondrously happy. The only dark cloud above his head is the knowledge that all of this will have to end in only a few days.

Yes, he and Steve will still be together. And they’ve promised each other again and again that they’ll visit each other as often as is physically possible. Every weekend, if they can. But there won’t be this proximity all the time anymore. Not for a while, anyway.

And that hurts to think about.

Bucky tries not to think about it.

Steve tries not to let him.

❄︎ ❄︎

On Wednesday, the day before New Year’s Eve, Bucky is in Steve’s room, getting ready to grab lunch with Sam and Nat, and then bring some to Steve in his studio, when his phone starts vibrating on the dresser.

Glancing down, he’s surprised to see Carol Danvers’ name and picture (a really adorable one from a few years ago when she and Bucky were having a picnic together in Prospect Park — her eyes squeezed shut and mouth stretched into an outlandish grin with all of her teeth showing) lit up across his screen.

It’s not like Carol and Bucky aren’t friends, they are. Very much so, in fact. But they’re both mid-to-late millennials, and serial texters. They don’t really _call_ each other.

“Ahoy,” is how Bucky answers, because that’s— It a thing, okay? It how Carol and Bucky answer the phone on the rare occasion they _do_ call each other. It’s their _thing_.

“Barnes!” Carol practically yells at him. “I am so glad I caught you!”

“You sound…harried,” Bucky observes, blinking. “How’s it going?”

Carol laughs a little breathlessly, and doesn’t deny it. “It’s actually going awesome,” she says, “but I have zero time to talk about it, so rain check on that. How are _you_ doing?”

“Why are you asking me like that?” Bucky asks her, wary. This energy is scaring him.

Carol snorts. “I’d _love_ to let you squirm on that, but I genuinely don’t have time, so I’m gonna cut to the chase: I have a job for you.”

Bucky’s eyes might just bulge right out of his head at that. “A job? For _me?_ ”

“Yup!” Carol says, sounding extremely pleased with herself. “You know how I’m vice principal at Shield Academy?”

“Yes, I do know that,” Bucky replies dryly, because they may not see each other that often these days, but he hasn’t forgotten his friend’s very prestigious position at said very prestigious high school.

“Well, my principal just retired, and I got her job.”

“Carol!” Bucky cries, so thrilled for her, he briefly forgets why they’re on the phone in the first place. “That’s amazing! Congratulations!”

“Thank you,” Carol says graciously. “The school board was bringing in this outside guy as the new VP — against my wishes, by the way — but it turns out Shield isn’t _good_ enough for Asshole McGee, and _he’d_ rather go teach at the Advanced Idea Mechanics School, and was only using Shield to get a better position _there_ , so he went back on the offer _completely_ last minute, just to leave Shield high and dry. But that’s fine by me, because that means Maria Rambeau, my _first_ pick, gets to jump in as vice principal, which leaves _her_ position wide open. And guess what class Ms. Rambeau teaches, Mr. Barnes?”

“I’m _guessing_ she teaches English?” Bucky pretends to venture. That’s his subject, and Carol sounds _way_ too delighted to be calling to ask him to teach something outside his wheelhouse, on a temporary basis, until they can find someone new.

“She _does!_ ” Carol singsongs. “You are so smart, Mr. Barnes. And dreamy, too.”

Bucky laughs, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Yeah, bet you say that to all the boys.”

“Yes, you know how _very_ attracted to men I am,” Carol deadpans. “Just love a large, hefty man, and his…I don’t know, what’s nice about men?”

“Dicks,” Bucky supplies.

“Right!” Carol says, like it just slipped her mind. “Their weighty dicks. Love ‘em.”

“You’re so hetero, Carol,” Bucky agrees.

Carol’s laugh is loud, and she snorts afterward, which makes Bucky laugh with her.

“So, whaddaya say?” she asks.

“To what?” Bucky asks. “An interview?”

“No, genius,” Carol scoffs. “I’m offering you the job. Sight unseen.”

Bucky’s jaw drops. “You—you’re _what?!_ ”

“You’d have to start pretty much as soon as you can,” Carol tells him, more seriously, “because Maria is stepping into the VP role when we come back from break. I can give you a couple weeks, if you need ‘em, but not more than that. You’d be doing me a favor, and it’s private school, so the pay is _good_.”

“You don’t even want to interview me?” Bucky squeaks. This is a _highly_ sought after position.

Carol huffs out another laugh. “Barnes,” she says, like he’s being ridiculous, “you forget that you and I met because we taught at the same school? Or that I used to observe your classes after I got promoted to vice principal there? I don’t need to interview you, buddy, I’ve actually _seen_ you teach. You’re _awesome_ at it, and kids fuckin’ love you. You’re one of those teachers that kids remember their whole lives as the teacher who made them feel safe, even though high school is terrifying. You want the job, you _have_ the job. I _want_ you on my team.”

Bucky blinks, that initial wave of shock ebbing into waves of gratitude, and even pride.

But then he thinks about the sex shop inside his bedside drawer back home.

Even if his family didn’t need him anymore, which he’s not sure is true, Bucky’s side hustle may make this new job impossible.

“Bucky?” Carol asks, since he hasn’t spoken for a minute.

“Actually, Carol,” he says carefully, “I think I have to tell you something first.”

❄︎ ❄︎

“What are you gonna do?” Steve asks him a few hours later. He’s sitting with Bucky on the studio’s sofa, scarfing down the food Bucky brought him from the restaurant he went to with Nat and Sam for lunch.

“We’re getting coffee in an hour,” Bucky answers, picking at a frayed edge on the sofa. “I’m gonna tell her about Winter, and see what she says.”

“What if she says you can have the teaching job,” Steve asks through a mouthful of food, “but you have to give up Winter?”

“Then,” Bucky says slowly, “I guess I’ll tell her that I’ll think about it? I mean, I’d have to anyway, because I need to talk to my family before I accept anything. I just—” He sighs harshly. “I don’t know, Steve, I _love_ teaching, but I’m not sure how I feel about private school. But private school _pays_ really well, and Shield Academy is _so_ prestigious. But I don’t teach for the accolades, I teach for the _kids_ , but maybe I shouldn’t be teaching at _all_ after the whole getting-naked-on-the-internet thing, and I _really like_ getting naked on the internet, but—”

“Pal,” Steve interrupts him softly, and Bucky looks up into smiling blue eyes. “You don’t have to make a decision right now, okay? Go meet with Carol, see what she says, and then text me when you’re done. We’ll meet back home, and we can talk it through. Okay?”

Bucky’s face crumples. He loves Steve _so_ fucking much.

“Okay.”

❄︎ ❄︎

Carol’s eyebrows are pressed gently together as Bucky explains. She doesn’t look angry, just thoughtful, and she’s quietly letting him speak without interruption, but it still makes Bucky very nervous. Before all of this, Sam was the only person who knew about this part of Bucky’s life at all. Now that number is up to three.

When Bucky’s finished, he folds his hands in his lap, and waits for Carol’s verdict.

She thinks about it silently for a minute, and Bucky watches her turn it over a few times in her mind.

“You said it’s anonymous?” she asks at length.

Bucky nods. “I’ve never show anything above my nose,” he confirms, “and I’m _extremely_ careful about not connecting anything from my own life to my…alter ego’s. I even disguise my space, and use a different phone for the account.”

Carol nods, worrying at her lower lip with her teeth. “Has anyone ever been able to tell it’s you?” she asks.

Bucky winces. “Yeah,” he admits. “Steve figured it out on his own.”

Carol shakes her head, and waves that away with one hand. “Well, that doesn’t count,” she dismisses, “it’s _Steve_.”

Bucky frowns, surprised by that. “What does that mean?”

“It means that Steve has known you since the actual day he was born,” Carol tells him bluntly, “and has been obsessed with you since…well, I’m actually assuming since that very same day. Plus, he’s seen you naked a buncha times,” she adds dismissively, raising her coffee cup to her lips. “Oh, and also, he’s kind of a genius,” she finishes as an afterthought.

Bucky’s pretty sure he’s flushed bright pink. “Steve’s been _obsessed_ with me?” he asks quietly, trying and failing to not sound absolutely awestruck at the prospect.

“You’re a dumbass,” Carol says frankly, and Bucky can’t even disagree. “Can you tell me your handle?” she asks, pulling out her phone. “I wanna see if I can tell it’s you.”

“You already _know_ it’s me,” Bucky protests, but tells her anyway.

Her thumbs stop typing halfway through him spelling out his username, though, and she looks up at him with shocked eyes.

“That’s _you?!_ ” she demands, and Bucky’s eyes get buggy.

“Do you follow me?!” he cries, not sure if he’s delighted by this, or horrified.

Carol looks conflicted also, but seems to be rapidly tilting over into horror, which just pushes Bucky further toward delight. She groans, and drops her face into one hand. “I’m actually one of your yearly subscribers,” she admits reluctantly.

Bucky laughs, short and loud. “Carol, you’re _gay_ ,” he says.

“Yes, I am,” Carol says, raising her head quickly and pointing at him, almost accusingly. “And sexuality is complicated, and you’re— _very_ good at what you do,” she finishes, turning red. “Now that I know it’s _you_ , however—”

“I’ll cancel your subscription,” Bucky tells her, still laughing. This is _amazing_.

“Thank you,” Carol replies, chuckling, too. “I don’t need a refund or anything, just don’t keep sending me your nudes, bro.”

Bucky nods, grinning. “Fair.”

Carol takes a deep breath, and then sighs it all out, leaning her head back against the booth she’s sitting in. But her lips are curled up in a smile, and Bucky isn’t as worried as he was.

Finally, after a minute or two, Carol sits up.

“Okay,” she says decisively.

“Okay…?” Bucky asks.

Carol nods. “Okay,” he repeats. “Job’s yours if you want it, buddy. Just make sure _that_ —” she points at her phone, lying face-up on the table, “—stays anonymous. You’ve done a damn good job about it so far, and you’re a fucking adult. I don’t think it’s your employer’s business what you safely and legally do with your own body, anyway.”

“Wait,” Bucky says, raising a hand to press pause here, trying to wrap his mind around this. “Are you saying you’re still offering me the teaching position, _and_ I can keep doing the Winter stuff?”

“That,” Carol says, grinning, and raising her coffee cup to him in a toast, “is _exactly_ what I’m saying.”

❄︎ ❄︎

Bucky texts Steve on his way back, as promised, and Steve leaves his studio to meet him back home. Bucky relays the entire conversation while they’re in the shower together, as Steve washes the paint from his body. Steve is over the moon excited for him, and Bucky ends up having to convince him _not_ to scoop him off his feet _in the shower_ , because they could both _die_.

But…it really does feel like the best-case scenario.

There’s just one thing standing in the way.

❄︎ ❄︎

“You’re a dumbass,” Becca says over video chat half an hour later. Winnie scolds her softly, but doesn’t disagree.

“Y’know,” Bucky answers, “a _lot_ of people have been saying that to me the last few weeks.”

“Because you’re a dumbass,” Becca explains helpfully.

“Let me make sure I understand,” George says, while Bucky makes a face at his sister through his computer screen, and Alpine leaps up onto the bed by his knees. “Your friend Carol offered you a highly sought-after position doing what you love, at a prestigious private high school, that wants to pay you lots of money.”

“Yes,” Bucky says.

“And you’re not sure if you should take it,” George continues.

“Yes.”

George whistles. “You _are_ a dumbass.”

“ _Dad!_ ” Bucky protests, appalled, as Steve cracks up next to him, and Becca and George high-five.

“I think what your dad and sister are saying,” Winnie tries to placate, though she’s undermining her efforts by clearly stifling her own laughter, _and_ she was the _first_ person in his family to call him a dumbass, two weeks ago, “is that this sounds like a great opportunity for you, Bucky Bear, and we think you should take it.”

“Really?” Bucky asks. “Are you guys gonna be okay without me?”

“We’ll be fine, son,” George insists. “We might need you to come up on a weekend here and there to help out, but I’m doing a lot better, and we will be fine. You’ve spent long enough putting a hold on your life for us, sweetie. It’s time you went home.”

❄︎ ❄︎

They’re in the studio again the next morning. Bright golden sunlight dapples the entire space. Steve’s painting is really coming along, the expressiveness and yearning already evident in the blocked out shapes, and the faces he’s been starting to define. Bucky comes up behind him and watches him work for a bit, leaning his chin down on Steve’s left shoulder.

The piece is stunning, even at this relatively early stage. Leyendecker is clearly there in the inspiration, but the style, and the work — all of that is purely Steve. He really is a master at this. So much artistry in this painting he’s creating for an ad — it’s astounding.

Bucky suddenly perks up a little as he notices something he hadn’t before. “Is that me?” he asks, pointing at the figure whose eyes are being slowly brought to life under Steve’s hand. He recognizes his own nose, and the cleft of his chin.

Steve’s mouth curls at the corner. “Yeah,” he says as he works. “Leyendecker used to draw his fella into all his ads. Guy was his muse.” He turns his head just slightly. Enough to brush Bucky’s cheek with his own. “He and I have that in common.”

Bucky feels a rush of emotion wash over him. He blushes pink, ducks his head to press a kiss to Steve’s shoulder. “You sayin’ I’m your muse?”

“I’m sayin’ you’re my everything,” Steve answers easily. His eyes are still on the canvas. Bucky feels his breath catch. He’s not sure if he can still breathe at all after that.

“Me too, Stevie,” he whispers into Steve’s shirt, where his mouth is still pressed. “You’re mine, too.”

Steve finally puts down his brush, and turns on his stool, pulling Bucky closer and wrapping his arms around his waist until Bucky is standing between his knees. He leans in, tilting his head up, and Bucky meets him halfway. Their noses brush, and then their mouths press together in a sweet, soft kiss. Another. A third. Steve gathers Bucky even closer somehow, pulls him into his lap.

“Move back in,” Steve murmurs against Bucky’s lips. “Come home.”

Bucky gives Steve a sleepy half-smile, lulled to relaxation by the warmth and soft press of his body. “Oh yeah?” he asks. “And where will Sam go?”

“Sam’ll stay right where he is,” Steve answers. “Move in with _me_.”

“Oh,” Bucky breathes out, a soft exhalation. “You want me to move in, like— _move in?_ ”

“Yeah,” Steve says. Then winces. “Way too soon?”

Bucky shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I mean—yeah. Probably. Right? But we lived together before.”

“We’ve lived together a lot, actually.” Steve’s hands rub up and down Bucky’s spine. “Your house was my first home.”

“ _You’re_ my home,” Bucky tells him instantly, too honest. But he doesn’t want to hold back anymore, not with this man. Not with his Stevie.

And Steve gives him a gorgeous smile in return. “I feel the same way,” he whispers. “It’ll be different than when we were just roommates.”

“Not _so_ different, though,” Bucky returns, reaching up and cupping Steve’s face in his palm, thumbing over his soft beard. “We’ll just share a bed. And kiss a lot more.”

“And fuck a lot more,” Steve adds.

“Is that really all that’s changed between us?” Bucky laughs.

Steve shrugs. “Kinda,” he says. “I already loved you.”

“I already loved you, too,” Bucky agrees.

Steve nuzzles his cheek. “We’re more honest with each other now,” he says. “Say what’s on our mind. How we feel about each other.”

“That is a good change.” Bucky presses his smile into Steve’s beard. Steve hums, and tucks one hand under Bucky’s shirt.

“So, will you?” Steve murmurs, low, his lips brushing Bucky’s as he speaks. “Will you move in with me, Buck?”

Bucky cannot contain his joy. “Yeah, Stevie,” he soughs, “I’ll move in with you.”

Moments later, Bucky ends up on his back on the hardwood floor, his and Steve’s clothes tossed all over the studio space. Steve’s warmth against his chest and stomach, pressing him into the floor, is making Bucky’s body sing, while Steve’s paint-stained hands all over him light him up with stars.

And when Steve pushes into him, sucking on his neck, and makes the music in him crescendo to a peak — as they stain themselves in smears of paint and a steady stream of gasping _I love you_ s — Bucky knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he’s home.

❄︎ ❄︎

He _does_ have to endure Sam’s relentless teasing when they get home, covered in paint and hickeys, both.

But who gives a fuck? Bucky’s _happy_.

❄︎ ❄︎

Bucky finds his old key to this apartment back on his keyring.

❄︎ ❄︎

Since the Christmas party was such a raucous and lavish event, and none of them are as young as they once were, everyone has already agreed to simple, small New Year’s Eve celebrations in their own homes. Nat comes over a little before dinner, and the four of them have wild plans to lie around the living room and watch Disney movies until the ball is about to drop.

Alpine is thrilled with the evening’s itinerary, which she believes was masterminded just for her, and spends a significant amount of time traveling from lap to lap, giving everyone a chance to attend to her.

Sam was in a mood earlier, which Bucky sussed out was due to the fact that Natasha is going back to Russia on Sunday, giving him only one day to spend with her after tonight before she’s gone again. He also confided that he really fucking wants to kiss her at midnight, but that he knows that’s still just as bad an idea as it always is.

Bucky gave him a hug when Sam told him all this, and promised that he and Steve wouldn’t kiss at midnight, either. Sam’s response to that was to call Bucky a dumbass.

People keep _saying_ that.

As it is, they’ve all four squished themselves onto the sofa together, despite there being two empty armchairs and the entire floor available by way of space. But halfway into the night, when the food has been eaten, and the first movie is over, Natasha wriggles her way out of her spot between Steve and Sam, and stands in front of the television.

“Are you going to make a speech?” Bucky asks from his slumped-down spot in the corner of the couch with his legs draped over Steve’s lap, unconsciously over-articulating so he doesn’t slur his words. He _may_ have already drunk two-thirds of a bottle of prosecco. He has become one with the couch cushions. Or—maybe he’s just smushed in between them, he’s not sure. Could be either.

Natasha gives him a fond look. As she should, Bucky is adorable.

Her fingers are curled around her champagne flute, and she looks…almost nervous? Excited? Bucky pats vaguely at Steve’s arm to request an extraction from the jaws of plush so he can pay more attention to whatever she’s about to say.

He’s both impressed and deeply smug when Steve knows exactly what he’s trying to convey right away, and easily pulls Bucky from the cushions’ maw.

_Yeahhh_ , he thinks to himself, _that’s my fucking best friend!_

Natasha takes a breath, and smiles. “I have some news,” she tells them all. “I haven’t been entirely honest about why I’m in New York right now.”

Bucky looks over at Sam, thinking maybe he knows what this is about, since he and Nat spend a lot of time together, just the two of them. But his eyebrows are pressed in, and he’s staring at her with confusion, and something like concern.

But Natasha smiles at him. She taps her fingers on her glass, and says, “A month or so ago, I sent an audition tape to the New York City Ballet. They asked to see me in person. That’s partly why I’m here.”

“And?” Steve asks collectively for the three of them left on the couch. Sam looks stunned.

Natasha’s smile stretches into a grin. “They offered me a principal dancer role yesterday, and I accepted. I’m moving back home.”

Bucky makes a wordless, delighted noise. Steve clamps one hand over his huge smile. They both look over at Sam—who’s still just staring at Natasha, wide eyed, shocked, and hopeful. Bucky thinks he’s holding his breath.

Nat’s eyes are locked on his. She tilts her head a little, and Bucky would call the expression on her face a smirk if she didn’t look so earnest. He’s never once, in years and years of knowing her, seen her look shy. But right now, she almost looks close.

“So, Sam,” she says, casual but for the glint in her eye. “You single?”

Sam doesn’t say a word. His lips part, then curl into a wide, beaming grin as he launches up off of the sofa toward Nat. As soon as he reaches her, he takes her small face between his hands, and right there, right then, kisses her at _last_.

Steve and Bucky both break out into cheers, hoots and hollers. Natasha has one hand around Sam’s wrist, the other on his waist, and she’s grinning into their kiss.

This is _so_ much better than the ball drop.

Eventually, Sam pulls away, and he and Nat just grin dopily at each other. Bucky turns his head to look at Steve, who’s grinning dopily at _him_. Nudging into his shoulder, Bucky tilts his face up. Steve leans in to him, and kisses him softly.

“Love you,” Steve murmurs when they part.

They’ve been saying they love each other out loud since they could talk. But Bucky never truly understood before now: neither of them have ever really meant it only as friends. Steve used to think Bucky was his heart, and Bucky has always known that Steve is his home. They’ve always been each other’s.

They’ve always been inevitable.

“Love you, too,” Bucky tells Steve with all the truth he possesses.

And then he clears his throat, lifts his half-full champagne flute from the coffee table, and stands.

“I would like to propose a toast,” he announces, and raises his glass. “To Natasha. For your new job, and your long-awaited homecoming.”

Sam gives him a gorgeous, gap-tooth grin, and scoops his glass from the table, too, raising it up. “And to Bucky,” he says warmly, winking, “for the same.”

“And to you both,” Steve chimes in as he also stands, raising his glass toward Sam and Nat, “for finally getting your chance.”

“And to _you_ both,” Nat adds, tipping hers toward Steve and Bucky, “for finally _taking_ yours.”

All four of them laugh, a wondrous shared joy. They’ve been scattered for too long, and soon, at last, they’ll all be back where they belong.

Bucky tips his glass a little higher. “To us!” he cries.

“To us!” the others echo.

They drink to themselves, and each other. And as they do, Steve wraps an arm around Bucky’s waist.

Bucky closes his eyes, leaning against Steve’s side. He breathes in that smell of Steve’s, that Bucky loves more than any other, as he listens to the happy noise of his friends.

❄︎ ❄︎

Steve kisses Bucky at midnight. It’s sloppy, and eager, and perfect, and it lasts _way_ into “Auld Lang Syne.”

They don’t catch shit for it, though. Sam and Nat are too absorbed in their own kiss to even notice.

❄︎

“Babe,” Bucky calls over his shoulder, “is the bag with the presents back there?”

He’s still in his car’s passenger seat, with Alpine on his lap, in her harness, on her leash. She still _hates_ carriers, so this is by far the easiest way to travel with her, but it does kind of mean he’s stuck here until his boyfriend’s finished unloading their suitcases from the trunk, lest his child try to dart out the back and jump in a snowbank, where she will disappear due to her coloring, and be forever lost until she desires tuna or cuddles.

Steve looks at Bucky over the back seat. “No,” he answers, “it’s under Alpine’s suitcase.”

Yes, Alpine has her own suitcase. No, that’s not weird. How _else_ are they supposed to bring her food, bowls, litter box, litter, cat bed, and six favorite toys from Brooklyn to Connecticut?

Bucky reaches behind the driver’s seat with the hand not holding tight to Alpine’s harness (she’s got wide eyes and huge pupils, and she keeps ducking around him to stare out the open hatchback, muscles all tensed to bolt, should she see an opportunity), and lifts one side of the weekender bag Alpine’s stuff is in. The giant tote bag they have stuffed with presents for their families is, indeed, nestled safely in the well of the floor there.

Thank god Bucky’s dating someone who compliments him perfectly. Steve would lose his own head without Bucky, attached or not, when his mind is focused on other things, but Bucky is _awful_ when it comes to remembering to bring everything he needs when he leaves the house.

But it’s okay, because Bucky remembers where everything in their house is after seeing it there once, and Steve personally hands Bucky a bag he’s packed with everything he’ll need for the day before he leaves for work in the morning.

And it’s not like their relationship is _perfect_. Even after two years of being together, and living together as a couple this time, they still have miscommunications. And they get angry, and hurt each other inadvertently, and sometimes they fight, but they always work it out. Because what Steve and Bucky have together is worth every tense moment, every serious talk, every tear shed and wiped away. They love each other entirely, but more than that, they _choose_ each other. Every single day.

So it’s perfect.

Steve finishes unloading the bags from the trunk, closes the hatchback, and then comes around to Bucky’s side to open his door and take Alpine from him so he can get out of the car.

Standing up for the first time in almost three hours, the very first thing Bucky does is fist his hand in the lapel of Steve’s coat, and pull him down for a slow, sweet kiss.

“I love you,” Steve murmurs, bumping their noses together as he holds a squirming Alpine tight against his chest.

Bucky smiles broadly. “I love you, too,” he says. And he does. He always has.

God, it’s been a _hell_ of a two years with this man. Moving in with him, into Steve’s room (the bigger of the two bedrooms, anyway) to be _with him_ right away had been scary, but the transition from roommates, to distanced, to live-in partners ended up being remarkably smooth. Steve attributed it to the fact they’ve always lived in each other’s pockets. Bucky thought it was more due to the fact they’ve both been in love with one another since they were kids.

Sam stayed with them for a while, continuing to sublet Bucky’s old bedroom, but spent less and less time there as he and Natasha moved further and further forward in their relationship. Just over a year ago, at Thanksgiving, the two of them announced they were moving in together, to Bucky and Steve’s great joy, and right after New Year’s, Sam packed up a moving van, and tried to hand over his key.

Neither Bucky nor Steve accepted it back.

“You’re moving three blocks away,” Bucky’d told him flatly. “Keep the fucking key.”

Sam laughed, and agreed, but on the condition that he wasn’t _ever_ going to come over without warning them first. Not after that time, two weeks after Bucky moved back in, when he’d gotten home early, unannounced, only to walk in on both of his roommates ass-naked, with Bucky bent all the way over the arm of the couch, and Steve buried all the way inside him.

Luckily, they’d been _facing_ the door, so Sam only really got an eyeful of their torsos and fucked out faces, but that had been enough to traumatize them all, and they’d quickly agreed on an “Always Text When You’re On Your Way Home” amendment to the House Rules, and then never spoke of the incident again.

(That’s a lie, Bucky has been subtly alluding to the event ever since it happened, just to watch Sam squirm, and then play dumb when he’s accused of doing it on purpose.)

There was some back-and-forth between Bucky and Steve on what they should do with Sam’s room after he moved out. A guest room seemed like the typical option, but Bucky had argued that neither of them were _typical_ , and also that it seems silly to pay for a two-bedroom in _Brooklyn_ and only use one of the rooms on the rare occasion that Becca came to stay the night.

“We’re not paying for my sister to have a whole room to herself here,” he’d said, and Steve conceded he had a point.

Steve is the kind of person who needs to leave his living space to work, otherwise he’ll never have any semblance of a work-life balance, so converting it into a private studio for him didn’t make sense. Bucky jokingly suggested they use it as a sex dungeon (turns out they’re both a _lot_ kinkier than either of them even thought before they got together), or even just a ‘sex room,’ to which Steve said there’s no such thing as a ‘sex room,’ and if they were going to do that, they should just straight up call it a ‘dungeon,’ but then Bucky shot back with, “It’s not a _dungeon_ if it’s just another bedroom where we can have sex, and then not have to clean up until morning,” at which point Steve was forced to look up at the ceiling for a prolonged period of time, quite possibly praying for strength.

But it was in that moment of intercession that Steve was divinely given the answer:

“Hang on,” he said abruptly, “let’s turn into _your_ studio.”

Bucky blinked at him, genuinely baffled that he hadn’t had that idea himself. “Oh, yeah!” he said.

So that’s what they did. Now that room is occupied by a huge bed, an elaborate collection of pillows and sheets in an array of colors suitable for complementing Bucky’s many lingerie sets, and a chest full of sex toys and bondage gear (now that he has someone else helping him with his shoots, he’s started doing full sets where he’s tied up, tied down, or hanging from the suspension frame Steve built him with his own two hands, perfect, sexy man that he is — he’s also been mastering the art of shibari in his spare time, Bucky loves him _so fucking much_ ). The closet is half-filled with Bucky’s lingerie sets — now hanging nicely from plush hangers, instead of crammed into a small suitcase — and half with tripods, lights, and camera equipment. Yes, the side hustle has become quite a production at this point, and Bucky’s business through it has grown exponentially over the last two years.

Also, they _do_ use the room to have sex — often _immediately_ after Bucky decides they’ve gotten enough shots for the day, usually while he’s still tied up and dripping — and then just crash into their own bed afterwards, leaving the clean-up for the morning. Which is something Bucky is still deeply smug about. It _is_ a sex room, they just don’t _call_ it that.

Thinking about being tied up and suspended while Steve fucks him has created something of a Situation in Bucky’s pants, which Steve notices. Not because he can feel it, they’re not pressed that close, but because he sees the look in Bucky’s eyes. He chuckles.

“Where’d you go, sweetheart?” he asks in a low voice.

“Home,” Bucky answers, smiling hazily. “My studio. After hours,” he adds, smile turning to smirk.

Steve’s eyes dance, and he presses one more brief kiss to Bucky’s lips before he steps away, handing Alpine back.

“Let’s get through Christmas Eve with our family,” Steve tells him in that voice he uses when he’s giving Bucky commands — which is _not helping Bucky’s Situation at all, Steven!_ — then drops his volume and says, “and if you’re a real good boy, I’ll suck you and fuck you later on tonight.”

“Jesus _Christ_ , Steve,” Bucky whines. “You are making this _worse_.”

Steve grins at him, shit-eating, and goes to unload the bags from the backseat, too. “Well, I can’t do it now,” he teases, “the windows are _right there_.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I swear to Christ, Steve,” he bites out quietly, “if you make me spend all day with my sister, your mother, and my parents, _half-hard_ , I will _murder_ you before Christmas morning. And then you won’t get any presents. Because you’ll be _murdered_.”

Steve cackles, lifting the last bag — the tote of presents — out of the car, and shouldering it. “Okay,” he relents, “how’s this: get ahold of yourself for right now—” Bucky scoffs in outrage, “—and when we go upstairs to put our stuff down, we’ll also say we’re gonna change, and I’ll suck you off real fast while we’re up there. And you’re an agnostic Jew, you don’t believe in Christ.”

Bucky rattles out a breath, self control rapidly failing. _Shields down, Captain!_ “Counter offer,” he retorts, diverting all power to _not_ stripping off all of his clothes immediately outside of his family home, where his parents or neighbors who knew him as a baby might see. “You take Alpine, so I can carry a bag in front of my crotch, then I make a break for the upstairs bathroom the second they open the door. You come up and meet me in the bedroom, and _then_ suck me off real fast.”

Steve purses his lips, making a show of thinking about it. “They’re gonna wanna hug us right away,” he points out.

“We just drove for three hours, pal, they’ll get it if we gotta pee. Plus, we have....” Bucky trails off, gesturing at all the bags they brought ( _way_ too many, really, for only four days) with his head, since his hands are clutching Alpine.

“All right,” Steve concedes, shouldering two more of their bags and then coming over to take Alpine back from Bucky again. “But you better come _real_ fast, Buck, or they’ll know something’s up.”

“They probably will anyway,” Bucky grumbles under his breath. “And how are you not affected, here?” he demands louder, honestly a little offended.

“Oh, I am, baby,” Steve tells him, suddenly _very_ serious, eyes all dark. Oh, _fuck_. “I’m just saving it up for later.”

Bucky audibly gulps.

Miraculously, their covert sex op actually works. Steve presses Bucky up against his bedroom door, and sucks his brains out in under thirty seconds, no joke.

He’s perfect, Bucky thinks, like he does every day. Like he has, every day for the last two years and longer. Steve is absolutely perfect for Bucky, and Bucky is absolutely perfect for Steve. Somehow, through years of muddled confusion and misunderstandings, heartbreak and hurt and forgiveness, they finally found their way to each other, and neither of them have looked back once.

As he and Steve change for cover, exchanging lazy kisses when they pass by each other, Bucky is _so_ ready to spend the rest of his life living in the love of this man. He’s _so_ ready to grow old with him, and to love him forever, even long after they die.

He doesn’t yet know just how ready Steve is for that, too. But he will. Very soon.

The next morning, sitting crossed-legged on the floor next to the tree, in his pajamas, Bucky opens a gift from Steve, which turns out to be a simple, but beautiful leatherbound journal. He flips open to the first page to see the paper inside, and stops when he sees a note, written to him in Steve’s pretty, artist’s cursive.

Three sentences in, he starts to cry. Covers his mouth with one shaking hand. He knows what this is. He _knows_ what’s happening right now.

_So, Buck,_ the heartfelt note concludes at the bottom of the page, _I just have one question for you…._

Bucky turns teary, shining eyes up toward Steve, the love of his whole life, sitting on the floor in front of him, knee-to-knee. Steve is smiling softly, gorgeous cornflower eyes already wet, just like Bucky’s. He’s holding his hand out toward Bucky. Held between his fingers and thumb is a gold ring, adorned with a single, light blue aquamarine. Bucky’s birthstone, the color of his eyes.

“Bucky,” Steve whispers, and his voice is thick, but level. Absolutely sure. “My love. Will you marry me?”

He barely gets the question out before Bucky is exclaiming, “ _Yes!_ ” and launching himself forward, into Steve’s arms, tackling him to the ground in his enthusiasm as his lips find Steve’s to kiss him as hard as he fucking can.

Bucky Barnes is wildly in love with Steve Rogers. He has been his entire fucking life. He’s ready to spend the rest of it just as wildly in love with this wild man.

And he will.

He _will_.

❄︎ ❤︎ ❄︎

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: the only people amongst Bucky's closest friends and family who DON'T call him a dumbass are Steve, who is arguably just as much of a dumbass as Bucky is, and Nat, who was probably thinking it.
> 
> **Some stuff I couldn't fit in!:**
> 
>   1. The first year he started teaching at Shield, Bucky was voted "Favorite Teacher" in the yearbook, despite having only been there for the last half of the year. He's maintained the title ever since.
>   2. Before they left for winter break the year Steve was getting ready to propose, Bucky's favorite students presented him with an extremely sweet joint-Christmas-and-Hanukkah card, awkwardly and eagerly orchestrated by Miles Morales, that Bucky proceeded to carry around with him for several weeks so he could read it over and over and cry.
>   3. Becca identifies as bi+ and queer, and came out to Bucky in response to him coming out to her. He sat her down when he was 22 and she was 16, and very seriously told her that he was gay, and she just grinned and went, "SAME!" (and then expanded on it when Bucky just sputtered at her).
>   4. Bucky buys Steve an engagement ring, too. Steve's is similar to Bucky's, but with a ruby (Steve's birth stone) instead of an aquamarine.
>   5. Sam is Steve's best man, Carol and Natasha are Bucky's best women.
>   6. Carol brings Maria as her date to Steve and Bucky's wedding.
>   7. Bucky is Carol's best man when she marries Maria.
>   8. Winter continues to be a huge success and creative outlet for Bucky, until he chooses to retire when he and Steve decide they're ready to be parents, so he can focus more time on adopting, and being a dad.
>   9. They adopt two little girls — sisters, ages 3 and 5 — ten years into their relationship (seven years into their marriage). They're the best dads ever.
> 

> 
> And if you're wondering who the other artists Steve shares his studio with are, the photographer is Peter Parker, the tech sculptor/installation artist is Shuri, and the bananas performance artist who does weird shit with knives is none other than the god of mischief himself, Mr. Loki Laufeyson.
> 
> Comments are my life's blood, please let me know what you think! 💖


End file.
